Throughout the letter that Balram is writing he teaches us numerous amounts of information about the Culture of India. What Balram teaches us is that if you’re not fully educated and you are born at the bottom, life in India is not enjoyable. This is the experience for Balram as he is a driver for a entrepreneur named Mr. Ashok in India. It is evident in the book that Balram is not satisfied with his quality of life and he wants to better it in the worst way to the point where he would be willing to do almost anything to escape the life of being a servant, but he for the most part knows that the odds are not in his favor. For Balram it is different because he is viewed as no ordinary citizen of India he is viewed as a white tiger and this puts him at a advantage over any ordinary Indian citizen. In the novel there are 5 highlighted motifs, they are the following: Darkness and Light, The Half-Baked Man, The White Tiger, Big Bellies and Small Bellies, and The Rooster Coop. In the next 3 paragraphs I plan to explain why Balram uses these 5 motifs to teach us about India …show more content…
Not one of these motifs is very positive about the life of India. Darkness and Light shows off that there are dark spots in India, The Half-baked Man exposes the educational system that citizens are not being fully educated, The White Tiger shows that intelligent servants or criminals are rare, Big Bellies and Small Bellies show that you have to be aggressive to succeed if you’re passive then you’ll remain at the bottom of society, and finally the Rooster Coop shows that all these impoverished people stay away from each other and don’t want to see each other succeed rather than rise together and fight to get themselves out of this bad cycle that they have lived in. I feel like Balram is telling us that there is nothing really special about
If it is fun who is going to stop anyone from doing whatever it is. No matter the dangers when the adrenaline is pumping there is a sense of invincibility. In the book Fire In The Ashes by Jonathan Kozol there is a character in chapter 4 Silvio: Invincible who was one of the main characters in that story who proves my point. A bit rebellious and still young Silvio had many different characteristics to describe him perfectly. Silvio had somewhat of a grudge against authority he never really obeyed his mother's wishes or the personnel that worked in Person In Need of Supervision or PINS. Silvio was also a defensive boy who protected himself when he was confronted by a thief who was trying to steal his mothers pager from him on the subway that
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is a memoir of a young, emotionally distraught child soldier who takes his audience through his mental and physical journey to his eventual escape of the Civil War in Sierra Leone. For the past few days, our World Literature class have been trying to figure out/argue what category A Long Way Gone falls under. In Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried, he distinguishes between two types of stories: (1) stories that need to be real and (2) stories that rely on the emotional truth. To me, A Long Way Gone is a novel that relies on the emotional truth and should be read as such; it relies on the emotions of human beings for the story to be understood as it was written by a boy like one of us. Initially I was not sure what the emotional truth was, so I googled the definition and got that, “an emotional truth is writing in such a way that readers not only learn the facts of an event, but can feel the joy, sorrow, anger, envy, love, hate, poignancy that the participant feels.” And I believe that a story that relies on the emotional truth is not any less significant than stories that strictly state the truth. A story told using emotional truth/validity is a story that, in my opinion, offers more of the real picture than that of a story that doesn’t tug on the emotions of a reader and just blatantly state the true happenings of an event.
Contents INTRODUCTION 2 CHRONOLIGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF EVENTS THAT LEAD TO CONFLICTS 3 CONCLUSION 5 INTRODUCTION An attention-grabbing story of a youngster’s voyage from beginning to end. In “A LONG WAY GONE,” Ishmael Beah, at present twenty six years old, tells a fascinating story he has always kept from everyone. When he was twelve years of age, he escaped attacking the revolutionaries and roamed a land rendered distorted by violence. By thirteen, he’d been chosen by the government, military and Ishmael Beah.
Throughout the story there is a constant comparison of White culture and Indian culture. It begins with the narrator noticing a difference in landscaping between the two cultures. ." . . there is always beauty in order. . . rows of growing things. . . beauty in captivity." (Whitecloud 116) Symbols in nature play an enormous part on this story. Here the narrator is describing the White culture; disciplined, orderly, enslaved. In the next paragraph he goes on to counter the White culture with his own Indian culture saying, "Later, when the first snows...
Joshua Solcom was a Nova Scotia born sea man and was the first person to sail single-handed around the world. Throughout his voyage, figuratively, and literally, Solcom becomes a man within his limits of the Spray. The author explains through various stages and chapters in the book that the sailor is lonely and wishes company. Solcom begins his journey of owning and sailing a ship as modest man, he begins by building ships. Solcom, was an adventurous man, he enjoyed the sea and all it had to offer. He would try to make it seem like people were with him on his trip. He picked up singing when he was on the Atlantic. Met Neptune. People are vey jealous of his ship because it was very well equipped for the weather. He is a very humble guy. Most of this chapter he
In the number one national bestseller “A Long Way Gone” by Ishmael Beah, the abuse of guns become extreme. Guns imply control, fear, and power to a point where rebels will taunt the people in order to succeed these tasks. Overthrowing villages, killing innocent residence, and inflicting fear appear in many parts of the biography. While Ishmael was present in a village, “the rebels began shooting their guns at people instead of shooting into the sky. They didn’t want people to abandon the town…” (24). This shows how guns is equivalent to control as the rebels are able to force the inhabitants from fleeing the village. Another example include that “The rebel pushed the old man to the ground, put a gun to his head, and ordered him to get up.”
In her article, “Sweet, Sour, and Resentful,” Firoozeh Dumas directs us through on how her mom readies a feast. She gives us detailed description on how her mother cooks the food for the guests by starting out grocery shopping until the part that the food is ready to be served. She writes about how because of their Iranian traditions they have to prepare a Persian feast for their newcomer friends and family, which brought joy to everyone, but her mother. Yet, we can see that she is trying to make sense to it all, every weekend they have guests over since the Iran’s Revolution started. Vitally, traditions stay great just when they convey satisfaction to the individuals celebrating those traditions. Also, the food that we choose tends to be based upon our culture, economic and social aspects. I agree with her even though traditions within various cultures are very different, but they all are supposed to do one thing that is bring everyone closer to each other, and bring happiness. However, that’s not always the case, especially in this article.
... world that Balram lives in is harsh and cruel, mainly because of the Rooster Coop. The Rooster Coop kept Balram from discovering his own potential in life, until finally he realized that he could leave the Coop. The fear and hatred the poor felt kept them in line, and kept others around them from becoming White Tigers. If the people of India were to realize that they were in a Rooster Coop, India’s slums would most likely disappear, and the poor of India would finally realize their true potential. The government would be forced to fulfill its promises and the rich would no longer rule India. Adiga has a lot of agility. Balram was a very dutiful servant. Balram repulsed the whore. He went through a period of florescence. This is an odd genre. Balram was their chaperon. Mrs. Pinky was quite in fashion. Balram uses a lot of sarcasm. In Mythology there are Centaurs.
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
In order to raise awareness of the staggering injustices, oppression and mass poverty that plague many Indian informal settlements (referred to as slum), Katherine Boo’s novel, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, unveils stories of typical life in a Mumbai slum. Discussing topics surrounding gender relations, environmental issues, and corruption, religion and class hierarchies as well as demonstrating India’s level of socioeconomic development. Encompassing this, the following paper will argue that Boo’s novel successfully depicts the mass social inequality within India. With cities amongst the fastest growing economies in South Eastern Asia, it is difficult to see advances in the individual well-being of the vast majority of the nation. With high
Moniza Alvi at the end of the poem still doesn’t fully know what her true culture is. “When India appears and reappears” shows that she really isn’t sure what her true culture is. This shows her struggles of not knowing and trying to figure out what her culture is. This is also shown in the beginning of the poem with the contrast between the east and the west. “Neon” is an example of westernization because of the bright lights, and colours. On the other hand, “Bazaar,” “Rupees,” and “Hennaing” all represent the east and they also emphasize the cheap experience, but also rich; it’s a valuable experience for Moniza Alvi and will last a lifetime because she won’t forget the exact moment when she discovered her identity through experiencing her culture.
Aravind Adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger published in 2008, and a winner of Booker Prize examines the issues of religion, caste, loyalty, corruption, urbanization and poverty in India. The novel besides receiving critical acclaim was also lambasted by some in India for giving in to western prejudices and playing up to their image of a poverty stricken, slum governed country. Some even went to the extent of calling it a western conspiracy to deny the country’s economic progress. It seems ...
Even though discrimination against lower castes is illegal in India under its constitution, it does still happen. There is a wide abundance of bribing present in both governmental and non-governmental situations. For example, a person high on the caste system can bribe police officers with money to cover up murders, and rich people have privileges in shopping malls. Balram experiences his first signs of corruption at a young age, when the Great Socialist bribed all votes from the workers of his tea shop. He also becomes the victim of corruption after his master’s girlfriend kills a child in a car accident due to drunk driving. His own master then turns on him to blame him for the murder. After Balram moves to Bangalore, he bribes a police officer in order to help start his own taxi
Environmental degradation is nothing but an outcome of the dynamic interplay of socio-economic, institutional and technological activities. Environmental changes can be governed by many factors including economic growth, population growth, urbanization, agricultural intensification, mounting energy use and transportation. In the era of industrial revolution and sustainable development, poverty still resides as a problem at the root of several environmental problems. The basic intertwined liaison between environmental degradation, poverty, and violent conflict has been a prominent theme contained within the literature on sustainable development and conflict resolution since the mid-twentieth century. Although, some analysts have argued that violence has not been limited to the poor and deprived, but many have concluded from various studies that the devastation of the environment, poverty, and conflict are inextricably knotted. As a Journalist in Times of India, Adiga travelled a lot in different places in India and got unveiling realities with his novel. Therefore, he portrays these realities in the novel through the story of Balram’s, who belongs to a poor and low caste shudra, sufferings in this Materialist era and his journey for lightness from his native place Laxmangarh, situated in the darkness of Jharkhand (India), to the materialistic world of Delhi and Bangalore. He admits in the novel, “like all good stories; mine begins far away from Banglore. You see, I am in the light now, but I was born and raised in Darkness.” (p.14) Adiga portrays the real picture of India of light with the colour of bitterness, conflict, cunningness, corruption, murder and massive toxic traffic jams.
The tiger is known for being a wild and dangerous animal, but also its beauty. In relations to India this could be a reference to the beautiful culture which enriches our experience of India, but also some of the downsides that it has like poverty and unemployment and other sociological factors which paint a grim picture of Indian life.