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SUBMITTED TO - S. B. GARDY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH M.K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY.
Name:- Vala Jyotsna Tanshukhbhai
Class & Semester: - 4 M.A Part -2.
Roll no: - 33
Enrollment No: - PG15101042
Year: - 2015-17
Paper No and Name : -13 New Literature.
Poor – Rich Divide In ‘The White Tiger’.
Introduction
Aravind Adiga is an Indian-Australian writer and journalist. He was born on 23 October 1974 in Madras
Apart from the White Tiger Adiga has written two novels namely.
1. Between the Assassinations and
2. Last man in Tower
The White Tiger is the debut novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was first published in 2008 and won the 40th Man Booker Prize in the same year. The novel provides a darkly humorous perspective of India’s class struggle in a globalized world as told through a retrospective narration from Balram Halwai, a village boy.
The White Tiger by Arvinda Adiga tells two interrelated and interested stories about Balram and his success in life, his success causes moral decay. Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest is very applicable to the novel. But what are really matters a lot in this novel is changing phase of morality, which can be considered as new morality which is full of immortal items.
Title Of The Novel
“ The White Tiger” written by Arvind Adiga. Balaram Halwai as a protagonist of the novel. at last he became the successful entrepreneur. also Balram Halwai is presented as a modern hero, in the midst of the economic prosperity of India in the recent past. also we can say that Balram is representative of the poor in India yearning for their “tomorrow”. also Adiga’s tries to define that his story is a parable of the new India with a distinctly macabre twist. he is not only an Entrepreneur but also a roguish criminal remarkably capable of self-justification. but here, we can define that the background against which he operates is one of Corruption , Inequality and Poverty.
However, at last Balram Become the one of the successful Entrepreneur and later on when Balram becomes an entrepreneur , he names his taxi company “The White Tiger Drivers”.
Poor – Rich Divide In ‘The White Tiger’
It’s really in our country we can’t escape our self because it’s in India for example poor people are aware that they live life like poor but they never try to be rich and that is reality of India. So we can say that Adiga is right in his statement.
“Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling.”
We can see it in this photo as under,
Indirectly Balram try to say about child labor and we can see it at many places. From those here I put one image but there are many children who unable to get education. Because they are doing some work and their family survive on his money. So, they never get time to study and if we think about girl child so they have to do work at home but never allow to study. I don’t want to say that all child but many can’t get education in our country because of these many reasons.
The White Tiger is singular in its fictionalized portrayal of the relationship between Balram Halwai and his master Mr. Ashok. the story exposes the poor-rich divide that surrounds India in the backdrop of economic prosperity, in the work of the IT evolution. speaking on the servant-master relationship , Adiga says:
“The servant – master system implies two things : one is that the servants are far poorer than the rich – a servant has no possibility of ever catching up to the master. and secondly , he has access to the master – the master’s money , the master’s physical person. yet crime rates in India are very low. even though the middle class – who often have three or four servants – are paranoid about crime , the reality is master getting killed by his servant is rare…… you need two things a divide and a conscious ideology of resentment . we don’t have resentment in India. the poor just assume that the rich are a fact of life …. but I think we’re seeing what I believe is a class based resentment for the first time”(sawhney , 2008)
India has always been land where extreme of wealth and poverty have existed side by side .Ancient inequalities still exists in our Indian, and throughout the novel we see that difference between Poor and rich through the perspective of Balram Halwai.
Adige has presented the two opposite side of India: India: of Darkness & Light, in which Poor people represented Dark side of India while Rich people represents light side of Indian. But this metaphor “goes in changing its meaning with different situation. Light & darkness go “.
In India two things are increasing together and it is increasing speedily and that is poverty of poor and richness of rich people. In this novel we find that how Balram Halwai suffers as poor and how Mr.Ashok who represents rich class made him to suffer with the power of money. Through various symbols like water buffalo, Dog, Pan, Rooster coop Adige has tried to show the poor and rich class conflict of India.
Balram Halwai is the white tiger of the book’s title-a title he earns during his schooling. He is the son of rickshaw-puller, his family is too poor for him to be able to finish school and instead he has to work in teashop .and at that point of time he asks himself that.
“Why did I grow up breaking coals and wiping tables, instead of eating Gulab jamuns and sweet pastries when and where I chose to? Why was I lean and dark and cunning, and not fat and creamy-skinned and smiling, like a boy rose on sweets would be”.
Balram wants to escape from the Rooster coop. having been a witness to all of Ashoke’s corrupt practices an gambling with money to buy politicians, to kill and to loot, he decides to steal and kill. Adiga delves deep into his subconscious as he plans to loot Rs.700,000 stuffed into the red bag.
The Rooster Coop
All Roosters are trapped in the Coop. When Roosters are together they feel uncomfortable. When rooster is taken away to slaughter other roosters become happy. But the roosters in the coop don’t know that their turn is the next one.
Balram considers the Rooster coop a unique symbol for the situation of India’s underclass. It is symbolizes master- slave relationship .Balram a typical voice of underclass man who is lived in fictive village Laxmangarh in India.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
The novel ‘The White Tiger’ Adiga’s define that the poor and rich divide in the novel. we can see the Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger is the story exposes the poor-rich divide that surrounds India in the backdrop of economic prosperity, in the wake of the IT revolution.
Adiga is so pictorial in his description of the protagonist, who plans his crime well in advance. his disgusting act of spitting repeatedly in the direction of his village could be a sign of final rejection of everything he holds dear, to escape from the Rooster coop of misery.
His schooling in crime begins with the reading of Murder Weekly as all drivers do, to while away their time.
“Of course , a billion servants are secretly fantasizing about strangling their bosses – and that’s why the government of India publishes the magazines and sells it on the streets for just four and a half rupees so that even the poor can buy it”.
He feels degraded as a human being, deprived of basic human rights to enter a shopping mall. a poor driver couldn’t enter a mall as he belonged to the poor class. if he walked into the mall someone would say,
“Hey, that man is a paid driver ! what’s he doing in here !”
There were guards in grey uniforms on every floor – all of them seemed to be watching me. it was my first taste of the fugitive’s life. Balram reminisces one of the newspaper reports on the malls , in the malls of new India ? the security guards at these shopping malls identified the poor wearing sandals let in only those wearing shoes, while a poor man id sandals was driven out. this made a man in sandals explode “am I not a human being too?”
He is educated in the mean ways of the rich which he imbibes himself in course of time. Balram , a victim of rich-poor divide , reverses the role and becomes “Master like Servant?” . when he is alone he takes pleasure in masochisms.
He plays the games people play who cannot reach out to be like the master. he had seen Mr.Ashok enjoying life with girls , frequenting malls and hotels. out of sheer spite for the rich he serves , he expresses his frustration in mean acts like those mentioned. his going to the red light area in search of a prostitute is to satisfy his suppressed revenge as well.
“The dream of the rich, and the dreams of the poor – they never overlap , do they ? see, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. and what do the rich dream of ? losing weight and looking like the poor”(Ibidem, p.22 ).
Conclusion
The novel is an excellent social commentary on the poor-rich divide in India. Balram represents the downtrodden section of our society juxtaposed against the rich . Deirdre Donahue labels the white tiger an angry novel about injustice and power which creates merciless thugs among whom only the ruthless can survive. however, the white tiger should make every righ thinking citizen to read the signs of the time and be socially conscious of the rights and duties to each one , irrespective of caste , creed or economic status, to prevent create the type of Ashok and Balram in our society.
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