The De-Composition of Writing in A Passage to India

This essay demonstrates how theories of writing considered as an invented technology can open new interpretive doors into the study of literature. First I briefly explain the effects and consequences of the technology of writing in relation to speech, the primary effect being the disembodiment of language. I explain in a similar way the effects and consequences of written story in relation to oral story. Then I examine writing and orality, literature and orature in Forster's A Passage to India in such a way as to show how the theory of writing as a technology can actually produce interpretations.