The character Fielding calls Adela Quested "one of the more pathetic products of Western education" (1.11.42).Ouch.But you can kind of see where Fielding's coming from. All fresh-faced earnestness...

When Dr. Aziz is introduced to us, we don't see him. We see the bicycle he throws on the balcony, and we see the servant missing the bicycle before it hits the balcony. We know that he is "all anim...

Fielding, the principal at the local college, is your quintessential, tweedy English professor. Think Dumbledore without the beard and flowing cloaks, the Robin Williams guy in Dead Poets Society,...

Mrs. Moore, mother of Ronny, Stella, and Ralph, friend to Aziz and Adela, is a loveable sweet-little-old-lady.Or is she?When she first arrives in India alongside Adela, Mrs. Moore, like Adela, is a...

You might say that Professor Godbole, an instructor at Fielding's local college, is the loopy guru of the school. He seems clueless and utterly oblivious to others' suffering, with a streak of sill...

Ronny Heaslop, the City Magistrate, is, let's face it, a suck-up. Take Martin from the Simpsons, give him a British accent and broad judicial powers over Indians, and voilá, you get Ronny Heas...

As the Collector, Mr. Turton is the head of the British civil administration in Chandrapore. He's an experienced administrator who has swallowed the British imperial project hook, line, and sinker....

Mrs. Turton, in contrast with her husband the Collector, is viciously racist. It's hard to find another character more racist than Mrs. Turton in the novel – even the subaltern that shows up...

Mr. McBryde, the police superintendent, is introduced to us as "the most reflective and best educated of the Chandrapore officials" (2.28.1). No wonder, then, that he gets along so well with Fieldi...

Educated in England, Hamidullah is a kind of mentor to Aziz in the novel. A Muslim like Aziz, Hamidullah is married to a woman who happens to be Aziz's distant relative. As the leading Muslim lawye...