A Clue in Howards End?
hpfan_mom
rdsilverstein at yahoo.com
Wed Jul 18 04:05:16 UTC 2007
No: HPFGUIDX 172064
Joined the library reading club this summer to kill time while
waiting for July 21. Came across this passage from Chapter 2 of
Howards End, by E.M. Forster:
_____
"Like many others who have lived long in a great capital, she had
strong feelings about the various railway termini. They are our
gates to the glorious and the unknown. . . .
To Margaret--I hope that it will not set the reader against her--the
station of King's Cross had always suggested Infinity. Its very
situation--withdrawn a little behind the facile splendours of St.
Pancras--implied a comment on the materialism of life. Those two
great arches, colourless, indifferent, shouldering between them an
unlovely clock, were fit portals for some eternal adventure, whose
issue might be prosperous, but would certainly not be expressed in
the ordinary language of prosperity."
_____
When Harry stepped through those arches for the first time, was that
a foreshadowing of his journey into Infinity through a different
archway, one with a veil? Boy, I hope not. I just cannot see him
dying at the end.
My guess - Harry's adventure will be prosperous, he will succeed.
But the results of his "eternal adventure" will "not be expressed in
the ordinary language of prosperity," which I take to mean a life
full of material wealth. Instead, his prosperity will be expressed
in love, which was missing from his life before he stepped through
those arches.
hpfan_mom, really really hoping that the last chapter is not
titled "The Man Who Died."
P.S. Many thanks to the poster who, several months ago, admitted
reading the chapter titles to HBP before reading the text and upon
seeing "The White Tomb" figured out that DD died. I will not even
glance at the chapter titles until I turn the page to start that
chapter!
More information about the HPforGrownups
archive