The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Essay

Despite the many attempts to eliminate poverty, the problem has never been solved. Even though these efforts have helped lower the numbers of people becoming poverty-stricken every year it the numbers still seems to progress. In the novel Behind the Beautiful Forevers Author, Katherine Boo brings a different perspective. Boo takes the reader into the Annawadi slum of Mumbai, India. The Slum was presented a jumbled, filthy and impoverished area hidden from the view of westerners and better-off Indian citizens beyond the concrete wall. Her Novel Serves as a snapshot into the lives of the impoverished people of Annawadi and a great comparison to poverty lines in America. In this essay, I will compare the way that Katherine Boo has presented the miserable lives of those in the slums and the poverty-stricken in America today.

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.

If you think about it, how does it make sense that the people that will eventually begin running your country aren’t getting proper education? Most children in India are child laborers so when it comes time for someone else to be in charge and “call the shots” they aren’t really going to know what they are doing because they either never got an education period or didn’t get a good one. It’s not fair nor is it right that children are missing out on an education because it’s so hard to provide for their families. I can understand how sometimes a family member dies and then it cost the family a lot of money and then the kids have to start working to help the remaining family to survive. These things happen, it’s part of life however a child shouldn’t have to sacrifice ALL of their education. "It is only half past seven o'clock in the morning. Boys of his age should be eating breakfast and getting ready for school," (Mr.Coal, paragraph 5.) The working hours should be a bit more flexible. By that I mean that they shouldn’t been during school hours, or maybe at least only taking a few of hours from

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.

While it may be easier to persuade yourself that Boo’s published stories are works of fiction, her writings of the slums that surround the luxury hotels of Mumbai’s airport are very, very real. Katherine Boo’s book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” does not attempt to solve problems or be an expert on social policy; instead, Boo provides the reader with an objective window into the battles between extremities of wealth and poverty. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” then, exposes the paucity and corruption prevalent within India.

Poverty and oppression is a serious condition that is prevalent even in today’s modern society. Women and children are exposed to poverty and subjected to a life of injustice. One of the countries where such problems still occur is in India. Despite the country’s modernization, there lies an undercity where the disparity of wealth is transparent. These social problems are thoroughly described in movies and literature such as Slumdog Millionaire and Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Catherine Boo, the author describes slum life for a set of individuals and the hardship that their social conditions confined them to. Another movie that gave insight to slum life in India is Slumdog Millionaire

Katherine Boo, a staff writer at The New Yorker and former reporter and editor at The Washington Post, has worked for over two decades “reporting within poor communities, considering how societies distribute opportunity and how individuals get out of poverty” (Boo 257). In November 2007, she and her husband, an Indian citizen, moved from the United States to India to study a group of slum dwellers in Annawadi, Mumbai (Boo 249). While studying this group of individuals in India from 2007 to 2011, Boo’s goal was to learn why the individuals within this slum have not banded together against a common enemy in order to gain upward mobility. She illustrates several common issues of developing nations including: corruption, education, the mismanagement of foreign aid, and the possibility for social mobility in her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. In this literary work, Boo accurately portrays the acts of corruption and as well as how corruption has entered the sphere of education, which is typically an individual’s only avenue to social mobility and success in that area. She argues that instead of rising up against a higher power, the individuals within the slum fight against one another to get a leg up on their competition, even if it keeps them in the same social class.

Singer’s arguments rest on the simple assumption that suffering, from lack of basic resources, is bad. Accordingly, his argument is that the way people in prosperous countries respond to situations like that in Bengal is not morally justified. His argument is that if we have the power to prevent bad situations from occurring, “without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance,” (Singer, 231) then we have a moral obligation to do so. In order to get people to give the appropriate amount of money Singer insinuates that the social distinction between duty and charity must be reconsidered. Moreover, charity should no longer be seen as a supererogatory act, or rather an act that is socially perceived as virtuous but has no social consequences if ignored. Thus, his

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

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.

India is a country in central Asia with a population of over 1.22 billion people making it the second most populous country in the world. Its high population is one of the factors that results in India having such a high poverty rate. In India today over 37% of the population live below the poverty line. The reality of such a statistic means that these people live in conditions unimaginable to people of the western world. In the film Slumdog Millionaire by director Danny Boyle deeper ideas associated with this poverty are developed including destiny, loyalty and how poverty frees us. These deeper ideas are developed through visual techniques

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

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