The White Tiger Essay

As a first generation Indian-American, I am no stranger to being a part of a distinct community while observing two unique cultures. Traveling to India exposed me to a dynamic population with rich diversity comprising of numerous languages and differing religions. Though these individuals may have had differing customs from their neighbors, there were similar ambitions to conquer grinding poverty. This poverty can be clearly noticed by seeing citizens sleeping on floors of a railway station, or the lack of air conditioning in searing hot weather. The frailty and mortality of the human condition was starkly visible in India. As a fellow human, I was humbled not only by the lack of privilege and opportunity of many citizens, but also by their

Issues of racism, women discrimination and the corruption of power used to be subtly touched upon or ignored. However they were also viewed differently depending on the era it was brought up in. Yet as time passed by, it seems these issues have become common discussion. This change of significance in how the audience responds and view texts that carry the notions of marginalization can be seen by Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ and Arundhati Roy’s

     The book "The Tiger's Child" is about a woman named Torey Hayden and one of her students, Sheila. Torey is a teacher for disabled children. When Sheila was six years old she was sent to the school where Torey was working. Sheila had a very harsh childhood. At the age of four she was abandoned by her 18 year old mother on a highway late at night. A year or so later, She was sent to live with her father in a migrant camp. While she was there, she was abused by her uncle and her father's friends. Sheila had awful personal hygiene and little schooling, although she was very bright. Another incident that occurred was when she was six years old Sheila abducted a three year old boy from his yard. She led

In the story “The Lady or The Tiger” a princess is forced to watch her lover choose his destiny. The king is described as semi-barbaric because he shows compassion towards the accused. He allows them to choose their own fate by letting them pick a door, one with a hungry tiger and the other which contains a beautiful woman who he would marry on the spot. The man in the story finds himself in this situation after the king discovered he was having a love affair with his daughter. At the end of the story the princess is torn and she cannot decide if she should guide the man to life or watch him die.

In the novel, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga the main character, is Balram, one of the children in the “darkness” of India. Adiga sheds a new light on the poor of India, by writing from the point of view of a man who was at one time in the “darkness” or the slums of India and came into the “light” or rich point of view in India. Balram’s job as a driver allows him to see both sides of the poverty line in India. He sees that the poor are used and thrown away, while the rich are well off and have no understanding of the problems the poor people must face. The servants are kept in a mental “Rooster Coop” by their masters. The government in India supposedly tries to help the poor, but if there is one thing Adiga proves in The White Tiger,

As ‘The White Tiger’, Balram has high standards to live up to throughout his life, even as a driver. “‘You’d never guess that his caste was a teetotaling one,’” said a minister Balram drove “‘would you?’”(Adinga 182). On his rise to entrepreneurship, Balram works as a private driver. Drivers are often seen as uneducated and lowly, so when Balram proves his quality, he is simply rewarded with kudos. While Balram works to be successful, John works to be a voice of reason within the World State, seemingly opposing his nickname. John, once an outsider to both his birthplace and now to the World State, tries to free them from what he believes is captivity, in a protest. He began to scream, “‘Free, free’” as “he punched the indistinguishable faces of his assailants” (Huxley 193). His views of the World State, rooting from his knowledge on the reservation, opposed the society. When he tries to speak out and becomes violent, he begins to fulfill the stigma of a Savage. Both men in the novels are the Black sheeps in their

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo is a documented version of life in a Mumbai slum. The “story” revolves around the life, death, and hope in the undercity of Annawadi. The book thrusts the reader into the hidden worlds behind the lavish living of the rich and into the lives of people that are impossible to forget. Originally published February 7th, 2012 by Random House in New York, Katherine Boo writes about the apparent economic inequality occurring in the Mumbai undercity. This telling of life in a slum provides a distinct look into the social and economic injustice that determines the way these people live their lives. The book highlights the struggle of those in Annawadi as well as the Indian people as a whole. Terror and the global recession shake the city and the rising tensions over religion, caste, gender, power, and jealousy take a violent turn. Behind the Beautiful Forevers is beautifully written and does a superb job of opening eyes to the brutal and unforgiving world of Annawadi.

This novel is about the oppressors and the oppressed and about the different ideologies used by oppressors to manipulate the farm animals and making them do work for the benefits of the ruler.

Literature means which reflects the life. Likewise Adiga has wrote the novels which reflect the day-to-day life of Mumbai. To conclude, Adiga has presented both the novels “The White Tiger” and “Last Man In Tower” with the common themes of corruption, identity crisis, religious belif during Modernization and globalization in India. The main theme presents, the fact of money changes a person to be a murderer though they are a servant or any close relation to anybody. Both the novel has the theme of identity crisis.

In fact, by attempting to glamourize suffering by portraying it superficially, writers may lose the connection with us that appreciates literature. Instead, what we are left with is an over extended attempt to glorify suffering, or hide it within a guise of reality that is too savage to be true. Instead of the appreciative feeling that reality imbues within me as a reader, I am left with a sense of disgust, confusion and dissatisfaction. This feeling almost overwhelmed me while reading Adiga’s “The White Tiger” and it tainted my experience with the book. Adiga had written the novel without any firsthand experience in the rural areas of India to which his main character referred to as the darkness. Instead, being of a higher class, his accounts were based on second or third hand experiences which do not adequately depict the lower class’ realities. I found the following depiction of India’s ghettos both farcically unrealistic and eventually

It cannot fairly be said that in Aravind Adiga’s novel, The White Tiger, the only way to escape the Darkness and advance in society is through violence, as an alternative route to the Light is presented in the story arc of Vijay, the pig herder’s son turned politician. Balram asserts that the murder of Ashok is not only the direct cause of his new wealth and status, but also the only possible trigger for his newfound social mobility. Yet, this is contradicted earlier in the story when he presents Vijay, the bus driver, as his role model for a successful person. Vijay, in order to achieve his elevated position, resorted to prostitution; despite not being a desirable alternative to violence, it is an alternative all the same and therefore violence is not the only way to escape the Darkness. Following this logic, it is Balram’s story and the immediate increase in wealth that results from the murder of Ashok that best supports violence as the only means of moving into the Light, and Vijay’s story is the best evidence against that point of view.

Can marginalized humans have genuine empathy for their oppressors? And if so, how does their passivity towards their oppressors lead to an accumulation of resentment? When reevaluating the narration of The White Tiger, readers should ask themselves these questions while reading it. In addition, Adiga uses the story to exploit the influence of modernization on India’s political corruption and India’s miniscule focus on the maltreatment of poor Indians. The country achieves the ambivalence of poverty by manipulating the lower class through political means. Politicians uphold socialist and democratic ideals without legitimate citizen participation in elections. Even so, the format of the country’s caste system relies on how the subordinate of

“The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga is a piece of literature that talks about India left and right. A book that can be half fiction half true. It talks about the fortunate and the unfortunate, the rich and the poor. The irony shown in this book about corruption, oppression of the poor, reality of India vs. the images foreigners have of India help portray our understanding of this novel.

Written by Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger tells the story of a man who went from living with nothing to someone with everything he could ever want. Balram Halwai grows up in “the Darkness,” an area of India where, among other things, family was the main source of life and contempt for family was of the utmost evil. When he decides to find a job outside of his social circle, Balram’s family implores him to send money home to sustain them. He finally hits his final straw when his grandmother begins to try to force him to be married, something he does not have interest in and knows it will take away his independence. Once he disconnects from his family, he is able to be himself, free from his former life that tied him down. As Balram Halwai embarks on his journey to become successful as the “White Tiger”, the social concept of family breaks down, thus giving way to him finding his independence.

He has killed, he has lied, and he has stolen. In simple terms he is the corruption he hates about the government. What Adiga was trying to represent with having a character like this, is to show what needs to be changed about india. India has so much potential and if “The White Tiger” shows us anything it's that the caste system is whats holding India back and one of the only things, besides governmental corruption. The caste system is putting a damper on the hugely untapped potential of india economic might. As explained in Deswals critical analysis of The White Tiger “religious or economic differences, but due to the mental slavery that is inflicted upon the Indians in Darkness. The writer employs the “rooster coop” analogy to his vision of enslaved Indian masses. He compares them with roosters in old Delhi, behind Jama Masjid where they are stuffed tightly in wire-mesh cages” (284 Deswal (4)). The cage that the caste system has caused India’s economy to grow slowly, and the only way out of it, is through ‘Governmental’ plans to help the poor, break free of the master-servant