In this essay I will be writing a critical analysis of E. M. Foster’s novel A Passage to India paying close attention to chapter seven, the character of Mr. Fielding as well as his attitude towards both the Indians and the Englishmen in India and how this effects the proceeds of the novel.

Mr. Fielding was an educator by profession and was well liked by both collogues and students in the educational and scholastic environment. He was also a well-seasoned traveler and “THIS Mr. Fielding had been caught by India late. He was over forty when he entered that oddest portal, the Victoria Terminus at Bombay” (Forster, 2005). Prior to arriving in India Mr. Fielding had visited and taught in many different countries and as such he was different to most of the Englishmen he encountered in India. He became first aware of this divide on the train ride when he noticed “Of his two carriage companions one was a youth, fresh to the East like himself, the other a seasoned Anglo-Indian of his own age. A gulf divided him from either; he had seen too many cities and men to be the first or to become the second.” (Forster, 2005). This was Mr. Fielding’s first taste of the distance he felt between himself and the other English men in India. As the novel progresses we see that this divide becomes increasingly large and destructive to his relationships.

Due to Mr. Fielding’s experiences with traveling and interacting with many different people he did not have the same attitude the other