Aravind Adiga, an Indian novelist wrote a picaresque
novel “The White Tiger” in 2008. It evokes many issues like the protagonist’s emergence
from the ‘Darkness’ to the ‘Light’, globalization,
modern days of India, competition and similarities between China and
India and religion. In this novel the author also uses narrative and epistolary
form of literature. His style of handling to the issues made him famous in the
world. So this work won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for the fictional
literature in 2008.
Balram Halwai, the protagonist of the novel lived in the
village of Laxmangarh, Bihar who
narrates his life through a series of long, late-night letters
to the Chinese Premire, Wen Jiabao. These letters explore that how does Balram’s
life arises from the stature of a rural son of a
rickshaw-puller (the poorest family) then
becoming the driver for the town’s rich landowner known as “The Stork” because
of his penchant for taking a cut of the local fishermen’s profits. Ultimately
to run his own business by killing to the own employer, Ashok and to theft
700,000 (Seven Hundred Thousand Rupees) which intended as a bribe for a
government official. With the help of the money he launches a taxi company
giving the name as “The White Tiger Drivers”. Finally Balram looks
“the white tiger” at the National
Zoo and identifies with “ the creature
that gets born only once every generation in the jungle”. It means Balram recognizes that he must escape his own
human and social “cage”.
Title of the novel, “The White Tigre”, is a protagonist’s nickname
which intends a rare animal that is said to come only once per generation.
Also Balram launches a taxi company with
the giving name “The White Tiger Drivers”. One more issue is handled with the novel that
is globalization in India when Balram claims that outsourcing is the key
to future economic success as international businesses profit well in India,
especially if they are in the technological fields like Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Yahoo! and
Hewlett-Packard.
As Balram says “The trustworthiness of servants is the basis
of the entire Indian economy” which
suggests the competition and similarities between China and India. Both
have the massive population that is working for the technological industry and might be the next superpower
countries in the world. Also having with massive economic disparities, in which
there are many rich people but more than that are poor people. Lastly it points out that a “Darkness” where
many impoverished people struggle to escape into the “Light”, where the wealthy
live in the lap of luxury. It comments that the poor serve the rich with an
honest attitude, while the poor remain poor, their hard work taken for granted.
The novel
touches a religious aspects that is Hindu and Muslim throughout the
story. At the beginning Mr. Krishna, a schoolteacher names Balram instead of
“Munna” ( means a boy) in reference to the brother of the Hindu God Krishna. Another
scene describes in the novel that is the
marriage of Ashok and Pinky madam.
Ashok’s father does not approve their union because she wasn’t from the
same religion or caste. The marriage breaks out by getting divorce and ends the
scene.
Thus the
novel is a relentlessly modern, “cool”
and very English Language Style. The vast contrast between poor and rich in
India, and the extreme rarity associated with rising from the lower classes to
the rarefied “White Tiger”. These levels depict so strongly that finds oneself rooting for the
murderer as the hero of this novel.
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