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.
The Indian government is corrupted and makes promises it is unable to keep. In The White Tiger, Balram describes that the government is “...the world’s greatest democracy. What a fucking joke.” (Adiga 145). When Balram lived in Laxmangarh his right to vote for the prime minister was taken from him, due to the fact that running candidates pay the current government to make sure they are elected. The government system also enables the rich to get richer. They do this by immensely taxing the poor and enforcing the caste system on the poor. The caste system is a labeling system you were born into and of what you are expected of in life. For example Balram had the caste of Halwai, which is derived from “sweet-maker”. This meant Balram was expected to work...
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... 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.
After a basketball game, four kids, Andrew Jackson, Tyrone Mills, Robert Washington and B.J. Carson, celebrate a win by going out drinking and driving. Andrew lost control of his car and crashed into a retaining wall on I-75. Andy, Tyrone, and B.J. escaped from the four-door Chevy right after the accident. Teen basketball star and Hazelwood high team captain was sitting in the passenger's side with his feet on the dashboard. When the crash happened, his feet went through the windshield and he was unable to escape. The gas tank then exploded and burned Robbie to death while the three unharmed kids tried to save him.
In the story, The Natural, certain characters and events are portrayed in a distinctive way that makes this story unique to other books and shows the typical writing style of the narrator. The author uses a repetitive writing technique that is impossible to overlook. The writer of this book is able to catch the reader’s eye with his concept of the importance of beautiful description. The Natural, by Bernard Malamud, uses great imagery that makes the story appealing.
Every individual has two lives, the life we live, and the life we live after that. Nobody is perfect, but if one works hard enough, he or she can stay away from failure. The Natural is a novel written by Bernard Malamud. It is Malamud’s first novel that initially received mixed reactions but afterwards, it was regarded as an outstanding piece of literature. It is a story about Roy Hobbs who after making mistakes in his life, he returns the bribery money and is left with self-hatred for mistakes he has done. Hobbs was a baseball player who aspired to be famous, but because of his carnal and materialistic desire, his quest for heroism failed, as he was left with nothing. In the modern world, the quest for heroism is a difficult struggle, and this can be seen through the protagonist in The Natural.
Balram is a considerate, morally correct and loyal man before the presence of eagerness for success enters his mind. Starting his journey in his career as a driver, he is open and commits to sharing his salary with his family and grand-mother, Kusum. His brother tells him that “[Kusum] wants you to sweat by all the gods in heaven that you won't forget her once you get rich,” to which Balram replies, “I swear” (Adiga, 47). His answer is quick and no hesitation is evident in his response implying that another possibility was never an option. His first responsibility with his money goes towards the well-being of his family, back in the home village and not making money for only himself. Also, when revealing to his employers that a fellow employee, Ram Persaud, is of Islamic background, the guilt felt by Balram displays that he is undoubtedly remorseful for his actions. The Stork and his family are against having Muslim workers in the house due to their Hindu background, therefore, Ram Persaud lost his job. He reflects that, ...
In the novel, “In the Skin of a Lion,” by Michael Ondaatje, the main character, Patrick Lewis, searches for identity and light. Without these elements, he lacks love and cannot survive the world. A passage in chapter three describes him as a lonely man that is isolated from the world around him. “Clara and Ambrose and Alice and Temelcoff and Cato- this cluster made up a drama without him. And he himself was noting but a prism that refracted their lives. He searched out things, he collected things. He was an abashed man, an inheritance from his father. Born in Abashed, Ontario. What did the word mean? Something that suggested there was a terrible horizon in him beyond which he couldn’t leap. Something hollow, so when alone, when not aligned with another- whether it was Ambrose or Clara or Alice- he could hear the rattle within that suggested a space between him and community. A gap of love,” (Ondaatje, pg.157) suggests his feelings of separation from his close companions.
In the novel The White Tiger, the protagonist Balram is a victim of the oppression of society. The oppression Balram suffers from leads him to sacrifice his values and relations. He is forced to follow the way of the society to survive. He is forced to obey his master’s command, even when unjust things happen to him, such as being scapegoated for a crime. The society also forces Balram to sacrifice his morality by stealing from his master and ultimately leading him to take his master’s life. He sacrifices his family by leaving them and living with his new master in order to make money.
In Avarind Adiga’s novel, the White Tiger, Balram’s final goal is to move from the darkness to the light, however, he fails to realize that even the light is darkness. Balram wishes to escape the darkness to the light so that he can escape poverty and create a better life for himself. He hopes to create a better life in the light is where the rich are able to live carefree lives, and be ignorant of the consequences of their actions. Light offers hope for a better life, but once the poor who were living in the darkness make it to the light, their lives are as bad, if not worse than as it was in the darkness. The black river – the Mother Ganga, is darkness itself, filling the country with darkness, extinguishing the light. Light cannot exist
The biggest impediment that is constraining Balram from reaching his potential is his ambivalent responsibility for his family. As a young child, Balram excelled in school and was recognized by the school inspector that he is special and intelligent, however due to his poor family, he needs to leave school to go to work. Balram explains, “The family had taken a big loan from the Stork so they could have a lavish wedding and a lavish dowry for my cousin-sister. Now the Stork had called in his loan. He wanted all the members of the family working for him and he had seen me in school, or his collector had. So they had to hand me over too.” (31). Balram is forced to leave school to help support and pay back the money his family owed. In front of the class, he was acknowledged for being a great student and had potential to be better than just a driver.
The current manifestations of the caste system are now far more generalized across the Indian subcontinent than was the case in former times. Caste as we now recognize has been endangered, shaped and perpetuated by comparatively recent political and social developments. This is evident even i...
Adiga’s use of monologue is key to the formation of this emotional bond between the reader and Balram as it gives a direct insight into his opinions and reasoning. Throughout the text Balram conveys his story in a first person perspective and often adds his own thoughts as well as perspective on the events. An example of this opinion giving is when Balram states “in this country we have two kind of people”. These kinds of thoughts are commonly displayed throughout the text and characterise him to be an intelligent, interesting person, despite being only “half-baked”. This forces the reader to start to like his character and appreciate his potential. The use of monologue also allows Adiga to further develop Balram’s character with the use of tone. Throughout the text Balram sustains a humorous yet condescending tone again furthering the reader’s appreciation towards him. An ex...
The history of tribal oppression in India is an old one. “The Sanyasi Revolt”, “The Wahabi Movement”, and “The Naxalbari Rebellion”, are evidence of the tribal outcry that appropriately foregrounds their requirement for fundamental rights as citizens of the country. Even after sixty six years of independence, India’s rural poor and tribals are lamenting under the curbing effects of destitution, unemployment, undernourishment, illiteracy and human trafficking. For these people, the notions of liberty, equality and democracy have no meaning at all. Though the country is free from the bondage of foreign rule, their repression and prejudices still continue leaving them dependent on their new masters.
The story Q & A, written by Vikas Swarup, illustrates the lives of those in the slums of India and how those living there experience life. The novel recites the unimaginable journey of a slum dog who becomes a billionaire. Throughout the rags to riches story of Ram Mohammed Thomas, he is presented with several catalysts which change his life.
In the second chapter of Animal’s People, its protagonist Animal talks about eyes, eyes that fill the darkness, that appear whichever way he looks, and look for things to see. He says eyes come whenever he starts talking, they quietly watch and patiently wait, and then settle like flies on the pictures that are born from everything he says.
Aravind Adiga in his debut novel The White Tiger, which won the Britain’s esteemed Booker Prize in 2008, highlights the suffering of a subaltern protagonist in the twenty first century known as materialism era. Through his subaltern protagonist Balram Halwai, he highlights the suffering of lower class people. This novel creates two different India in one “an India of Light and an India of Darkness” (Adiga, p. 14). The first one represents the prosperous India where everyone is able to dream a healthy and comfortable life. The life of this “Shining India” reflects through giant shopping malls, flyovers, fast and furious life style, neon lights, modern vehicles and a lot of opportunities which creates hallucination that India is competing with western countries and not far behind from them. But, on the other side, the life nurtures with poverty, scarcity of foods, life taking diseases, inferiority, unemployment, exploitation and humiliation, homelessness and environmental degradation in India of darkness.
Urvashi Butalia in her book, The Other Side of Silence, attempts to analyze the partition in Indian society, through an oral history of Indian experiences. The collection of traumatic events from those people who lived through the partition gives insight on how history has enveloped these silences decades later. Furthermore, the movie 1947 Earth reveals the bitterness of partition and its effect of violence on certain characters. The most intriguing character which elucidates the silence of the partition is the child, Lenny. Lenny in particular the narrator of the story, serves as a medium to the intangibility created by the partition. The intangibility being love and violence, how can people who grew up together to love each other hate one another amidst religion? This question is best depicted through the innocence of a child, Lenny. Through her interactions with her friends, the doll, and the Lahore Park, we see silence elucidated as comfort of not knowing, or the pain from the separation of comfort and silence from an unspoken truth.