SOURCE: "The Short Stories," in The Fiction of E. M. Forster, Wayne State University Press, 1967, pp. 56-88.

Here, Thomson, a noted Forster scholar, discusses the mythical and archetypal aspects of Forster's short stories.

In Forster's stories, one way of symbolizing the complete division between innocence and experience is the two-kingdom geographical setting. We have this in "The Other Side of the Hedge," "The Machine Stops," and "The Celestial Omnibus." The stories we are now looking at create the same kind of effect by more indirect means. In "The Story of a Panic" the tourists are intruders in Pan's kingdom and must flee from the place of incarnation. Later the boy must flee from the inn and garden—the world of the tourists—into the open country. In "The Road from Colonus" Mr. Lucas is alone in the grove during the moments of his vision. The rest of the...