Aravind Adiga in his psycho-social thriller, The White Tiger, explores issues that modern day India faces, ranging from social mobility to globalization, and morality to corruption. Adiga’s use of an epistolary novel allows his first person narrator to not only provide a commentary on the socio-political and geopolitical problems that India face, but also reflect on the effects of these problems on his own life. Adiga exploits the corruption in India and uses it as device to develop Balram’s character, as he journeys from “the darkness” to “the light”. It is true that Balram becomes increasingly corrupted, and at some points the reader may sympathise with him, however at other points, his actions cannot be justified. Growing up, Balram is tainted …show more content…
The corruption in hospitals, where “doctors can keep their government salary and work in private hospitals”, sees people like Balram’s father die of horrible deaths every day. Dismayed by the lack of respect of the government for its dying citizens, Balram is corrupted by the fact that in the “darkness”, there is no service, not even in death. Balram also claims that “the schoolteacher had stolen our lunch money”, which was for a government funded lunch program. However, Balram doesn’t blame him, which justifies that Balram, from such a young age gives into the idea of corruption saying that “...you can’t expect a man in a dung heap to smell sweet”. In addition to his father and the school teacher, Balram is corrupted by his childhood hero Vijay. Growing up, Balram idolises Vijay for having escaped “the darkness”. However what he is ignorant of is that even though Vijay is in “the light” he is still corrupted by “the darkness”. Balram explains that “Vijay and a policemen beat another men to death”, yet he doesn’t see it as a problem, because he understand that one cannot become successful in such a corrupt system without becoming as corrupt as the system itself. It is here that Adiga asks the question of how are impoverished Indians are expected to refuse to engage in corruption when they live in such poor conditions. Thus, the reader is able to sympathize with Balram’s corruption, …show more content…
Ashok, who is the first person to expose Balram to real corruption and also acts as his ticket out of his impoverished life. Following the hit and run of a pedestrian by Pinky Madam and Mr. Ashok, Balram expresses disgust and rage at the circumstances, where servants are frequently framed for the crimes of their masters, and the servants ' families are so deluded that they actually brag that their boy has been so "loyal". Balram is morally polluted into thinking that to escape such situations, you have to be a part of the corrupt system. Thus he claims that he “was corrupted from a sweet, innocent village fool into a fellow full of, depravity and wickedness, all because they happened in Mr. Ashok first.” Learning from Mr Ashok and his environment, Balram becomes tainted enough to come to the conclusion to murder his master. Balram understand that he must transform himself enough to embrace an alternate system of morality, become the iteration of the Nietzschean ubermensch, which allows him to justify murder and betrayal of family. The reader understands that this alternate system of morals is crucial towards his self-improvement, but at the same time they lose empathy for him when his moral depravity is demonstrated by murdering Mr Ashok. The act of murder for personal gain, or any other reason can never be justified, because murder in the end is murder, it has no
What would you do if someone you loved was being tried and they either lost their life or had to live with someone else? This is the choice that a young princess was faced with, but what did she choose? In “The Lady Or The Tiger,” the princess gave into her own greed and would rather see her lover die, than see him happy with someone else. She would rather end his life shorter for her own good instead of having his best interest at heart.
“Corrupt” is defined as causing someone and or something to become immoral, dishonest, or dehumanized. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding and “I Only Came To Use the Phone” by Gabriel Garcia, corruption of authority is a theme reinforcing the main idea that humans instinctually understand that savagery is necessary for survival. Throughout both stories the reader gets a substantial perception of the immorality and dishonesty as the animalistic patterns that humans instinctually have represent what the authors are intending to display. The authors, Golding and Garcia, depict the message that when the characters holding the power are corrupt, then all of those around the power will be corrupted as the characters like all humans will instinctually become savage. The authors reinforce this theme by describing the details of the characters, setting, and objects around the corrupted authority in a pessimistic manner.
In The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga our protagonist struggles in his journey to adulthood. Born to a rickshaw puller who ends up dying of tuberculosis due to government corruption, Balram sets his sights to become somebody better than his father–– someone who wears the uniform–– as he’s a smart person and an entrepreneur. On his journey, he is confronted with many difficult decisions which help him discover the kind of person that he is; while also learning how corrupt the upper class is and how that has to do with the government. In the end he succeeds and goes from a rooster in the Rooster Coop, to somebody who 's broken out and made it–– out of the darkness, into the light. However, this doesn
The statement, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”, simply means that the more power one has – the more control one has over people – then the more corrupt it is possible for that person to become. This statement is certainly correct if the person with the power has certain proclivities towards corruption. There are many examples in the book, “Animal Farm”, by George Orwell, of power corrupting those in charge because they had these tendencies. In the story, the most powerful animals are the two pigs, Napoleon and, to a lesser degree, Snowball. During the course of the story these pigs used their power to get more power, and in the process their inclinations towards corruption triumphed. When Old Major, the boar who came up with the idea of all animals uniting against humans, died, Napoleon and Snowball saw an opportunity where they could take control and took it. Napoleon used force to get rid of Snowball and take all the power for himself, and he used fear to keep the other animals from revolting. He used scapegoats so that he could not be blamed for anything that went wrong, and propaganda to brainwash the animals into loyal slaves. Napoleon changed and broke the commandments of Animal Farm to benefit himself, and he lacked empathy for all those who worked hard for him, executing those that might cause him trouble.
Further explained by Boo, “the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained” ( 566). Boos uses a female resident at Annawadi to allow readers to sympathize those who use corruption to advance. When readers encounter Annawadi inhabitants, one of the first citizens, Asha, is described as the slumlord’s wife who yearns to be in a position of power. In her pursuit to establish money and power, Asha creates false schools and nonprofit organizations for government funding. However, Boo turns a normally despicable situation into one of piteous pursuit. Asha yearns to become better than her previous life in a farming village, where laborious work brought death upon the population and gave fruitless results, and will do anything to improve herself. Similar to how others “prospered”, many impoverished residents in India turn to nefarious acts for money, power and a higher status, at the expense of others in similar circumstances. Boo describes this as “...Powerless individuals blamed other powerless individuals for what they lacked…[and] tr[y] to destroy each other” (3302). Boo allowed readers to identify with individuals who use fraud, bribery, and other elements of corruption to be liberated from the cycle of poverty. (226
In the novel, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga the main character, is Balram, one of the children in the “darkness” of India. Adiga sheds a new light on the poor of India, by writing from the point of view of a man who was at one time in the “darkness” or the slums of India and came into the “light” or rich point of view in India. Balram’s job as a driver allows him to see both sides of the poverty line in India. He sees that the poor are used and thrown away, while the rich are well off and have no understanding of the problems the poor people must face. The servants are kept in a mental “Rooster Coop” by their masters. The government in India supposedly tries to help the poor, but if there is one thing Adiga proves in The White Tiger, it is that India’s government is corrupted. Despite the government promises in India designed to satisfy the poor, the extreme differences between the rich and the poor and the idea of the Rooster Coop cause the poor of India to remain in the slums.
In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo tells the stories and struggles of families living in a slum adjacent to the Sahar Airport in Mumbai, India. Boo details the ways in which the residents of this slum, Annawadi, attempt to escape their poverty, but fail to do so. Despite numerous initiatives sponsored by the Central Government of India to improve the lives of the many individuals living in Annawadi, these programs are ultimately unable to do so due to deep-rooted corruption in the city of Mumbai. Regardless of this, the residents of Annawadi seem to accept corruption as a fact of life, and do little to fight it. As illustrated over the course of Boo’s narrative, this results from the fact that many Annawadians recognize the ways in which the laws of their society allow for the unfair treatment of certain groups of people, especially the poor and religious minorities, and are also cognizant of the fact that they have no real power to change a system that
In order to understand why Whitty’s argument is effectively communicated it must be noted that this article was published in the politically progressive magazine, Mother Jones. The audience of Mother Jones mostly consists of young adults, mostly women, who want to be informed on the corruptness of the media, the government and the corporate world. In order to be fully effective in presenting her points, Whitty starts her article by creating a gloomy imagery through her story of the city of Calcutta and the hard lives which its citizens live. Through her use of words such as “broken down…. Smoky streets” to describe the scene at Calcutta, she is able to create this gloomy image. She ties this gloomy story to how the population of Calcutta is the reason for the harsh living environment and how immense its population density is when compared to cities like New York. Additionally, she discusses how the increase in population has caused harsh lives for individuals in the Himalayas, the rest of India and the rest of the world. Through these examples she ties the notion that the root causes of such hard lives are because of the “dwindling of resources and escalating pollution,” which are caused by the exponential growth of humankind. She goes on to
As shown in literature, corruption and the abuse of power is an ongoing discussion. When it comes down to the point where people are being used and abused physically and psychologically, it creates a hostile environment for both the subjects and the abuser. As represented in the two similar texts Lord Of the Flies and “I Only Came to use the Phone”, corrupted authority and abuse of power usually end up leading to the collapse of a society or a world of chaos and violence.
The author demonstrates how one can lose sight in life and become corrupt through focusing only on wealth, supremacy and materialistic possessions
In Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger, Balram repeatedly tells us how badly he’d love to go kill this
The white tiger is one of the biggest in the cat family. The white tiger is long it can grow up to 3.3 meters long and weigh as much as 300 kilograms hard to carry. Subspecies of the white tiger like Sumatran Tiger, Amur(or Siberian) Tiger, Indian (or Bengal) tiger, south china tiger, malayan tiger,indo-chinese tiger,bali tiger,javan tiger,caspian tiger thats extinct theres nine subspecies of the white tiger.A lot of subspecies are endangered or extinct because people hunt them for their fur to make jackets or sweaters and destroying their habitat.Some tiger cubs don’t live to be an adult because around half of the cubs die around 2-3 years of age.The cubs leave their mother at around 2 years old they live a long time because their mom taught them what they would know from eating to hiding from people.A group of tigers is called ambush or streak because the group may be hunting.You probably thought these tigers can’t swim because they are in the cat family but if you do you are wrong because ...
Leaders are not always to be trusted, and this is highlighted in the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell as the message of the text. In Animal Farm, leadership is represented through the actions and personalities of the various characters as a powerful, but easily corruptible force. The Leaders of Animal Farm start off with good intentions but as the story goes on it becomes obvious the leaders have grown power-hungry and have become the ‘superior’ animals, showing that equality does not exist. Propaganda and manipulation play a big part in the novel, stopping the animals from protesting or noticing that their leader was extremely greedy and corrupted. There are excellent leaders as well as awful ones, making it hard to know who to trust in, who to believe and what to do, after all leaders are hard to go against, but a corrupted leader is never a good thing.
“Drive the corruption from the land, don’t harbor it any longer, past all cure, don’t nurse it in your soil – root it out!” (164).
In this way, Salman Rushdie presents the derogatory picture of India throughout the novel preferring the superiority of what is European and inferiority of what is not. By presenting the orientalist perception of India, Rushdie attempts to attract the western readership. In spite of the fact that he himself is an Indian, he could not avoid the attraction of western readership. For this reason, sometimes, his position becomes ambivalent.