"The white Tiger" By Arvind Adiga

 This blog is a part of my classroom activity on The white Tiger by Aravind Adiga. 

 Click here to show worksheet of given task.

1) How far do you agree with the India represented in the novel The White Tiger? 

( Research article on Representation of India in Adiga's white tiger )


Aravind Adiga in an interview with the BBC said;


“The White Tiger is the story of a poor man in today’s India, one of the many hundreds of millions who belong to the vast Indian under class; people who live as labourers, as servants, as chauffeurs and who by and large do not get represented in Indian entertainment, in Indian films, in Indian books. My hero-or rather my Protagonist-Balram Halwai is one of these faceless millions of poor Indians”

The novel studies the contrast between India’s rise as a modern global economy and the lead character, Balram, Who comes from crushing rural poverty. “At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the West, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal in justice of society(Indian). That’s what I’m trying to do-it is not an attack on the country, it’s the greater process of self-examination” (“Review: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga”, The Telegraph).

 the picture Aravind Adiga paints of India in The White Tiger is of a nearly feudal society disguised as a democracy. If even a tenth of what Balram describes as normal operating business is actual, and there is no reason to believe otherwise, then India’s economic miracle is as much a lie as China’s. The country might have gained its independence from the British at the end of the 1940s, but the majority of the people in India are still trapped in servitude. The White Tiger is a depiction of the social and economic inequalities of contemporary India. It is a penetrating piece of social commentary, attuned to the dissimilarities that persist despite India’s new prosperity

The novel is set in present situation in which the writer portrays the hard reality of contemporary Indian society. He collates the rural India with urban India through satire and black humor. He brings to contrast the disparity between progressive Indian cities and regressive Indian villages. The novel is centered on Balram Halwai, the son of poor rickshaw puller, Vikram Halwai. He is the strong voice of underclass in which the subalterns, landless laborers, unemployed youths, poor auto drivers, servants, prostitutes, beggars and unprivileged figures. This paper aims to study the darker aspects of India as enumerated in this novel by Adiga along with a contrast with the light aspects of cities.

Social groups involve two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics and collectively have a sense of unity or objective similarity. In the case of Aravind Adiga’s ‘The White Tiger,’ the vast numbers of different social groups are represented in several different ways. Drivers in India are an example of a social group mentioned throughout the novel. Adiga’s interpretation of each driver or group of drivers in the novel are viewed though the eyes of Balram Halwai, the main character of the novel, who goes from living on the streets, to becoming a driver, to developing into an entrepreneur of his own driving company.

Apart from that he satires on the the Indian systems major like 

• Indian Education system
• Indian Marriage system
• Way of becomes Successful entrepreneur 
• Way of doing the Buisness
• Bossim
• Servitude nature of Humans
• Indian Police system 
• Joint family living system                                                                                                                        Almost every field or aspects of Indian peoples and their way of living life is covered by Adiga in this novel. 

(2) Do you believe that Balram's story is the archetype of all stories of 'rags to riches'?

This story told by the central character Balram Halwai who move from rags to riches. Rags to rich means a journey of becoming poover to rich. In the movie Slumdog Millionaire the protagonist jamal maliks story and Adiga's The white tiger are both similar in a same narrative about the journey of becoming rags to rich.  Balram was a middle class Halwai son who letter on becomes a famous entrepreneur. Though he would become successful because of murdering of his master and stalled his name and money.  

(3) "Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique, deconstructive criticism aims to show that any text inevitably undermines its own claims to have a determinate meaning, and licences the reader to produce his own meanings out of it by an activity of semantic 'freeplay' (Derrida, 1978, in Lodge, 1988, p. 108). Is it possible to do deconstructive reading of The White Tiger? How? 

  

 To deconstruct the text or writers own writing is one of the prominent key feature of postmodern novels. Adiga and Julian Barnes way of narrating the things at some level similar. For example, first character narrates the story and letter on by him / her self deconstructed the narrative. Like in Adiga's the white tiger,  

 As novel begin that in first sense Balram talk about to Mr. Jiabao. He says that,

         “Neither you nor I can speak English but there are some things that can be said only in English”.

It means that Adiga knows about use of language as better way.

       This novel we also deconstructed on the basis of class conflict. Balram is servant and also driver of Honda city car. In India servant is always faithful to his master example like Hanuman. So here this idea of loyal or faithful servant of his master was deconstructed very artfully.

(4) Is it possible to read The White Tiger in context of Globalization? 

            Yes, it is possible to read "The White Tiger" in the context of Globalization. Through out the novel we see some form of America seems to pop up in a key moment. for example when Balram is describing Ashok’s corruption on page 173,

 “you’ve got plenty of places to drink beer, dance, pick up girls, that sort of thing. A small bit of America in India.”  

 So here see effect of globalization clearly. India is being like America so here we see cultural diversity and open up new exiting world. Some how it is good thing but sometime it also harm to the culture. Next we see in the novel that Balram sees Ashok being transformed by the influence of American culture, the creeping globalization that is taking over Delhi.