Subalternism In The White Tiger

Relationship between servant and master is found in the Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger. With the rise of capitalism, the growth of economy and political corruption in India led to a change in lifestyle of the wealthy, who now live in a hedonistic way. However, the protagonist of the novel, Balram Halwai belongs to a low social class that is prevented from the luxuries of the rich’s world. He is employed by Ashok Sharma, a landlord, to be his chauffeur. Thus, we can assert that Balram represents the working class whereas Mr. Ashok, the bourgeoisie of the country. Adiga focuses on the experiences of Balram under the Mr. Ashok’s domination to exemplify the master-servants relationship in India.

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,

In this paper I would like to argue that E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India has represented the East in a negative way. This is a traditional novel for exploring themes of racism and the effects of colonialism. It deals with the tensions between India and the Britain during the British Raj in India.

Chakrabarty Vs. Gramsci: In his book “Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference” author Dipesh Chakrabarty not totalizing as he feels it is important that the race, history, and practices of different localities disrupt the totalizing thrust of capitalism. Postcolonial thought and ideologies via “Totalizing” history as only a European experience and development of capitalism does not allow for human diversity and does not acknowledge that various cultural histories are part of and continue to modify current history. Thus, one must also incorporate the subjective human experience of other races and cultures into history and the development of capitalism and vice versa (p.22). In chapter two of “Provincializing Europe,” Chakrabarty recognizes the diversity of human experience and describes the experiences of political modernity in India and other races as different from Eurocentric experience. He asserts we must question “historicism” as an idea thus suggesting that to “understand anything it has to be understood as a whole via its historical development” (6).

In Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, Balram Halwai, a witty and complex teen, discusses through a collection of letters the disturbing yet captivating exploit of how he evolved from a village peasant to a successful entrepreneur. Balram, born as a low caste Indian, feels compressed and subdued by working as a servant. He makes a series of choices that ultimately lead him to his escape of the rooster coop, a theme in the novel representing the corruption of society and the "greatest thing to come to this country in the ten thousand years of its history" (147). Included in those choices is his decision to murder his employer, Mr. Ashok.

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 the novel “The White Tiger”, the writer utilizes the “Murder Weekly” magazine to draw the line between perception and reality in this Indian society. The narrator depicts that all “drivers and cooks in Delhi” read this magazine and as much as they would love to, they are unable to “slit their masters’ necks.” Aravind Adiga utilizes this magazine as a source of outlet to showcase the harsh reality these workers live in. They are used and abused to the point that rather than having perceived dreams of taking the weekend off, they mesmorate over the thought of killing their masters to be free; a harsh perception contrasted to a harsh reality. Furthermore, this dreamland perception is emphasised when it is expressed that this weekly magazine usually ends with the murderer hanging himself.

In life, there are some things that you have the ability to control and other things that you can't control. For example, you have the ability to decide and make your own decisions throughout the day, but you don't have the ability to choose what family you were born into or how your life will begin. I n The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, the narrator of the novel, Balram is just like everybody else in this world. Unfortunately, he was born into a very poor Indian family stuck in the lower caste. His father, who eventually dies from being overworked as a rickshaw puller, as well as the rest of his family, have no hope of escaping this corrupt system.

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

In conclusion 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. The corruption shown in the book is the teacher stealing the student’s money and the school inspector getting a question that he asked wrong. The reality of India vs. the images foreigners have of India is shown in the book there was framing involved and no doctors in government hospitals. last but not least is the oppression of the poor is

In The White Tiger, morality is seen to be relative to each individual. It is presented as either rigid or flexible. The story is told in the point of view of Balram Halwai, a man born into extreme poverty in the poor village of Laxmanghar where there are “glistening lines of sewage” (Adiga 36). Throughout his entire

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues that certain novels “have an empathetic human quality, or ‘emotional truth,’” which “is different from honesty and more resilient than fact.” Adiga and Satrapi use “emotional truth” in The White Tiger and The Complete Persepolis to invoke the readers’ empathy and desire for social justice. Through the characters’ perspectives, both authors break down cultural stereotypes and reveal how consequences from political and social upheavals affect the people close to the conflicts. Adiga uses Balram to demonstrate the effects of the caste system and how he must be unique to find a way to be released from the “Rooster Coop” and undermine his status in society (Adiga160). He sees himself as ambitious and is not willing to surrender to a confined life that has no opportunities for advancement because he envisions a better future for himself. Balram calls himself a white tiger, which represents something that is rare and different from the others. In order for him to achieve a different life, he must act against the expectations of authority by rebelling and becoming aggressive and violent towards Ashok. Through Balram, Adiga uses imagery to describe how the lower caste can seek change. Balram says “the book of your revolution sits in the pit of your belly young Indian,” which expresses that the desire for change is inside of them and they must act upon it to find themselves and freedom (Adiga 260). According to Waller, “Adiga is both asking Indians

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