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.

From the start the novel is laden with the pressures that the main characters are exposed to due to their social inequality, unlikeness in their heredity, dissimilarity in their most distinctive character traits, differences in their aspirations and inequality in their endowments, let alone the increasingly fierce opposition that the characters are facing from modern post-war bourgeois society.

Both the movie Slumdog Millionaire and the novel White TIger were set in India, but the two pieces tended to respresent two ideas that clashed together. In Slumdog Millionaire, the main character is honest and rises above corruption, making it out of the slums of the world and even gets a girl! Balram in White Tiger, however, succeeds in life by become less human and more corrupt. The novel itself pretty much laughs in the face of the usual story of the good guy winning.

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 the second most populated country the world has, the top 10% of Indian society posses 74% of the wealth. The reason for this inequality and also a great comparison in the novel by Katherine Boo, Behind The Beautiful Forevers, are the character traits of Abdul and Asha. Abdul attempts to remain pure, like ice, in his selfless morals, questioning if people can stay good when surrounded by corruption. Asha, on the other hand, makes selfish, “muddy” decisions such as scamming her neighbors and sleeping with authority figures for power, both being actions that perpetuate inequality. Asha even goes so far as to dismiss her responsibility for these actions by asking, “how is it my wrong if the big people say it is right?" Yet, the answers to these

. By the type of language and the choice of words that the author used to write his essay, it is very likely that it was written for the British people, to make them aware of the injustice and cruelty of Imperialism in the colonies. The author’s aim is to make the reader feel disturbed and uneasy by describing in detail his negative experiences in India. This rhetorical analysis explores the success of the author in portraying the negative impact that Imperialism had on those being governed under it, but also on the impact on those in power. The way Orwell used the words for describing the scene of shooting the elephant, his aim was to get the reader’s mind to understand the injustice of Britain’s rule over the natives. While Shooting an

The novel show about Mumbai culture, tradition, Landscape and behavior of the people. While reading the novel “The White Tiger” there is a urge that due to poverty the protagonist who is from pelor family his master. Not only poverty

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.

Adiga describes the passiveness of the poor as a Roosters Coop, chickens in “wire-mesh cages” at a market. He also writes that these roosters “see the organs of their brothers lying around them.They know they are next, yet they cannot rebel (147).” The isolation of the poor occurs because of their inherited obedience and indifference to their own welfare and their community’s. Indian society and culture conditioned people of a lower status to see themselves as hopeless and inadequate to their rich counterparts. This feeling of unworthiness frequents the minds of the lower caste and suppresses from ample amounts of opportunities. Disillusionment from various lifestyles and certain privileges engenders envy for affluent classes, which then turns into abhorrence.

The narrator of the novel, “The White Tiger,” by Aravind Adiga writes in first person. This particular narrator is Balram Halwai, who tells about his own journey throughout the book. The writer uses the style of the narrator, Balram, writing letters to the Chinese Premier. This particular narrator is telling the story because it is him that is writing the letters. This style of letter writing helps to tell the story because through these letters Balram tells of how he came to be a success in life. The reason he started to write letters to Mr. Premier was in response to something he heard on the radio. He heard the statement that said, “Mr. Jiabao is on a mission: he wants to know the truth about Bangalore” (2). Balram, the narrator, knows he is a man with little formal education, but considers himself an expert on the hidden truth of the India culture. Mr. Premier also wants to meet with Indian entrepreneurs and hear about their success and Balram wanted to tell about his. He considers himself an expert because of his life story. Balram grew up in a rural area in poverty. In school an inspector calls him “The white Tiger,” because he said “it is the rarest of animals” (30). He called him this because thought Balram was the brightest kid in the village. He was forced to drop out of school and start working to help support his family. He ends up getting a job as a chauffeur to the Stork’s family. The Stork is one of the bosses that have control over Balram’s village where

In order to address the conflict between the rights of local people and the Bengal tiger, a conservation project was issued in 1973, turning a large proportion of the Sundarbans into a refuge. It is in this context that the story takes place, and through this context that Ghosh evaluates the extent to which such a utopian ideal is possible.

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.

In the novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, the reader notices the differences between the modern American view of politics and society between the politics and society in the novel. This novel takes place in the southwestern part of India in a town called Kerala and is focused on the wealthy family of the Syrian Christian Ipe family of Ayemenem. Within this family, many of them have problems in their lives and as a result, go to the house once their problems have taken a turn for the worse. A major theme of this story is the society of India and the caste system that is in place. Some characters that were majorly affected by the caste system are a woman named Ammu and her two children, Estha and Rahel along with an Untouchable named Velutha. Besides the caste system Ammu and her children must worry about the social system and the outcomes of actions that are not socially acceptable. Another recurring theme of this novel is the change in political stances in the country of India and how it affects the characters. Since the Ipe family is wealthy, they own a factory called “Paradise Pickles and Preserves” and some character struggles revolves around the fact that there is a motion for a change in politics. Although the novel can be understood on its own, it makes it more understandable if the reader learns about the political history of India and an understanding of the caste system. Besides the political history and caste system the view on gender in the country of

E.M. Forster’s classic novel “A Passage to India” tells the story of a young doctor, Dr. Aziz, and his interactions with the British citizens who are residing in India during the time of the British Raj. Throughout the novel, the reader gets many different viewpoints on the people and the culture of India during this point in history. The reader sees through the eyes of the Indian people primarily through the character of Dr. Aziz, and the perceptions of the British through the characters of Mr. Fielding, Adela Quested, and Mrs. Moore. Through the different characters, and their differing viewpoints, the reader can see that Forster was creating a work that expressed a criticism that he held of the behavior of the British towards their Indian subjects.