Name: Trivedi Disha Hiteshbhai
Paper no: 13 (NEW LITERATURE)
Topic: Themes in the white tiger.
Year: 2015-2017
M.A.Sem=4
Submitted to: Smt. S.b.gardi department of English (M.K.B.U)
The White Tiger Themes
By: Arvind Adiga
Summary:
Introducing a major literary
talent, The White Tiger offers a story of coruscating wit, blistering
suspense, and questionable morality, told by the most volatile, captivating,
and utterly inimitable narrator that this millennium has yet seen.
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant, Philosopher, Entrepreneur, Murderer Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.
Born in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his village's wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man's (very unlucky) son. From behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation. While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly ("Love -- Rape -- Revenge!"), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles (all but one). He also finds a way out of the Coop that no one else inside it can perceive.
Balram's eyes penetrate India as few outsiders can: the cockroaches and the call centers; the prostitutes and the worshippers; the ancient and Internet cultures; the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger. And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations. Sold in sixteen countries around the world, The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation -- and a startling, provocative debut.
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant, Philosopher, Entrepreneur, Murderer Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along.
Born in the dark heart of India, Balram gets a break when he is hired as a driver for his village's wealthiest man, two house Pomeranians (Puddles and Cuddles), and the rich man's (very unlucky) son. From behind the wheel of their Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation. While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly ("Love -- Rape -- Revenge!"), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles (all but one). He also finds a way out of the Coop that no one else inside it can perceive.
Balram's eyes penetrate India as few outsiders can: the cockroaches and the call centers; the prostitutes and the worshippers; the ancient and Internet cultures; the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is (almost) impossible, the white tiger. And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations. Sold in sixteen countries around the world, The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation -- and a startling, provocative debut.
Use of
symbols in novel:
The White Tiger: Balram
earns this nickname when he impresses a visiting school official with his
intelligence and reading skills. It’s a symbol for rare talent – only 1 in
10,000 Bengali tigers are white.
“The Darkness”:
The poverty-stricken, rural area of India where Balram's village, Laxmangarh is
located. It is fed by The Ganges, “The River of Death”, where millions of
India's dead are cremated.
The Black Fort: The
architectural centerpiece of Balram's village. As a child he is afraid to go
alone, but he conquers this fear as he gets older. It later becomes his
sanctuary, where he goes to contemplate his misfortune. The fort is located
high on a hill, and as he looks down on his village, he vows to escape from The
Rooster Coop and never to return.
The Chandelier: Hanging
in Balram’s Bangalore office is a vintage chandelier. He frequently looks to it
for “inspiration,” confessing to “staring” for long periods of time. The
chandelier comes to symbolize the “Light” of Bangalore and Balram’s new life.
Honda Citizen: This
is the more luxurious of the 2 cars owned by the Stork's family. When Balram is
1st hired as a driver, he is never allowed to drive this car. When he is
promoted and able to drive the Honda, he feels like he has “made it” in life.
Later in the story, Balram secretly takes the car out at night on his own,
pretending to be wealthy.
The Rooster Coop: A
metaphor Balram employs to describe the Indian servant/master system. One day
in the marketplace, Balram sees roosters being slaughtered next to other live,
caged roosters. The roosters know they are next, but they do not rebel. Balram
observes that servants in India remain trapped in servitude – but no one breaks
out of the “Rooster Coop” because of family honor.
Themes
Corruption in
India
Throughout Balram’s
narrative, Adiga constantly exposes the prevalence of corruption throughout all
of India's institutions. Schools, hospitals, police, elections, industries and
every aspect of government are thoroughly corrupt, while practices such as
bribery and fraud are entirely commonplace. Balram's approach to this truth
largely involves a deeply cynical humor. However, there is an ugly component to
his character arc. In order to escape the "Darkness" and enter into
the "Light," Balram must himself become a part of this system. His
victory is thus bittersweet; while he has succeeded in elevating his social
position, he continues to live in a country paralyzed by corruption, which
prevents true progress from taking place. Adiga's ultimate point seems to be
that corruption necessarily breeds corruption, unless of course a greater
revolution remakes society.
Globalization
The India described by Balram is
in the throes of a major transformation, heralded in part by the advent of
globalization. India finds itself at the crossroads of developments in the
fields of technology and outsourcing, as the nation adapts to address the needs
of a global economy. Balram recognizes and hopes to ride this wave of the
future with his White Tiger Technology Drivers business in Bangalore, but this
force of globalization has a darker component for him as well. It threatens and
disenfranchises those adhering to a traditional way of life, such as his family
in Laxmangarh. Hence, he must change who he is in order to compete in this new
world. Adiga thus vividly conjures the tension between the old and new India,
suggesting that succeeding in this world (as Balram does) requires a flurry of
ethical and personal compromises.
Social Mobility
Balram frequently discusses the
issues of social mobility in the new social hierarchy of India. Having
idolized Vijay from childhood, Balram recognizes the possibility of
moving up in the world, but has to confront the reality of such movement
throughout his story. One of the big issues is how India's social system has
changed. Under the caste system, people's fates were predetermined, but they
were happy, believing they belonged somewhere. However, the new social
structure promises the possibility of social mobility, but actually only offers
two social divisions: the rich and the poor. The poor are kept in an eternal
state of subservience and servitude to the rich by the mechanism that Balram
dubs "The Rooster Coop." However, they are now more unhappy because
there is a possibility of social mobility that nevertheless remains out of
their grasp. Balram ultimately finds a way to break from the Rooster Coop, but
it requires him to compromise his ethics and personality - he has to kill his
master and betray his family. That social mobility is a specter captured only through
such difficult means is a comment on the unfortunate reality of a world built
more on limitations than possibility.
Identity
The White Tiger is largely a
story of self-fashioning, as Balram undergoes a transformative journey to
construct his own identity. Inspired by his childhood hero, Vijay, who also
rose from a humble background to achieve success in the upper echelons of
Indian society, Balram dedicates himself to self-improvement, so much so that
he is willing to destroy who he once was. He sees identity as fluid and
malleable, a fact articulated through the many name changes he employs
throughout the story. Ultimately, he even chooses a new identity for himself in
imitation of his master, calling himself Ashok Sharma. And yet the novel
is full of dramatic irony revealing that Balram cannot fully repudiate the
person he once was. He remains full of unresolved guilt and provincial
superstitions, reminding us that while identity might be entirely fluid, it is
also entirely immovable as well.
Morality
Ultimately, The White
Tiger is a tale about morality, suggesting that morality can be viewed as
either rigid or flexible. Balram eventually embraces the latter option. In
order to justify murdering Ashok and risking his family's lives, Balram develops
an alternate moral system. He reasons that the money he steals from Ashok is
rightfully his, since servants are exploited by the rich, and he convinces
himself of his exceptionalism as "the white tiger" in order to
rationalize his decisions. Believing he is the only one who has truly woken up
to the truth of the "Rooser Coop," he feels compelled to change his
life. In this sense, Balram has become a version of Nietzche's
"ubermensch," or over-man, who believes himself to be above the moral
and legal limitations of society. Adiga poses a question through Balram: do we
blame a criminal for his decisions, or do we try to understand those decisions
as reactions to an overly oppressive and restrictive society? Assuming that a
reader does not have a definitive answer, Adiga suggests then that morality is
a fluid and unfixed concept.
Pairs and
Dualities
The White Tiger abounds with
instances of twinned pairs and dualities, each corresponding to one half of a
central dichotomy: the rich and the poor halves of India. Balram poses India as
broken up into two sections, the "Darkness" and the
"Light." Examples of twinned pairs from each of these two halves
include: the "men with small bellies" and "men with big
bellies;" the hospital where Balram's father dies and the city hospital
visited by the Stork; the beautiful blonde prostitute visited by Ashok and
the uglier, faux-blonde prostitute hired by Balram; the apartment building in
Delhi and its servants quarters below; and the two versions of all markets in
India (one for the rich, and a smaller, grimier replica for the servants). The
most significant of these twinned pairs is, of course, Ashok and Balram
themselves. It is telling that Balram, the narrator, views the world as split
into halves. It reveals the extent to which oppression has ruined his
worldview.
Another means by which Adiga explores this theme is through
the symbolic rearview mirror, which doubles everything through a reflection and
hence functions as a conduit for the confrontation between Ashok and Balram. This
particular image suggests that identity can be transferred across the divide -
one can move from one area to another. Other instances of dualities in the text
serve to further highlight the extent of Balram's transformation; for example,
the two car accidents (Pinky Madam's hit-and-run and the death of the bicycling
boy) demonstrate just how far Balram has come in his quest to become a
successful entrepreneur. Balram was once a pawn in the game, whereas in the
latter case he has found the power to be a representative of the more fortunate
"Light."
Family
The extended Indian family plays
an incredibly significant role in the traditional way of life in the Darkness.
The family is the core social unit, so all its members are expected to act with
selfless devotion to its interests. Though the poor ostensibly view this
construct as a strength, Balram comes to see it as another way through which
the poor are kept in the "Rooster Coop." Firstly, the expectations of
family enforce limitations that can quash individual ambition (as they almost
do with Balram). Further, since a servant's disobedience is visited upon his
family, servants remain trapped by the whims of their masters. Social mobility
becomes impossible. In order to break free and live the life of a successful
entrepreneur in Bangalore, a city representing a new India, Balram must
sacrifice his family. This conundrum seems to suggest that in order to thrive
in the modern world and embrace the potentials of a New India, this traditional
attachment to the family must be relinquished in favour of a newfound emphasis
on individualism.
Thank
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