Assignment: Paper no. 13

Name: Rudrika Gohel

Course: M.A. English

Sem: 4

Batch: 2017-2019

Roll No: 31

Enrollment No: 2069108420180015

Submitted to: Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English MKBU

Email Id: rudrikagohel97@gmail.com

Paper No: 13

Topic:  Quest for identity in 'The White Tiger'

∆ Introduction...

Aravind Adiga, recipient of Booker Prize award was born 23 October 1974 in Madras, India. He has written three novels The White Tiger, Between the Assassinations and Last Man in the Tower. His very first and Booker prize winning novel depicts the
contradictions in the early free Indian villages. The second one deals with the stories of the Assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the last one deal with the story of the struggle for real estate in Mumbai.

∆ Quest for the Identity in the White Tiger:-

Balram searched his identity as the half baked person of the postmodern world.We can say the most noticeable theme in The White Tiger is identity. And novel deals with many issues. The setting in this novel is based on a caste system and Balram fights to go against the way things are usually predicted to go. In this society, if you grow up poor, your chances of being poor outweigh your chances of being in middle class let alone being rich by a long shot. There is corruption in the system that prevents people from disregarding the norm.  

There is corruption in the system that prevents people from disregarding the norm. The poor are treated with little respect so it is understandable that Balram is looking for a way out. The name of the book goes well with the theme because of Balram’s strive for individualism. 

“Munna? That‟s not real name.

 He was right: it just means boy.”

The name, Balram, is a name given by his school teacher, Krishna, on his first day of 

schooling. According to Balram India is two countries, one is an India of light and another India of Darkness. It is a Darkness where he was born and raised. He describes it is a placed in Darkness since the freedom of India. It is just away from the technologies, roads and light; 

in the face of Delhi and I.T. city Bangalore.

Pramod K. Nayar writes, 

Diasporic writing, especially in the age of globalization, is a consciousness raising genre, where political issues of culture. 

family doesn’t permit him to complete his education. In India uneducated deprived people either joins the tea shop or becomes porters in the big cities as Balram joins tea shop with his brother, Kishan and used to sleep on the road with him in the night. He undertakes job like coal crusher and table sweeper, but never been satisfied with his earnings. The prime concern of their life was food, shelter and identity. Balram faced so many calamities in his life therefore decide not to die like his father in the 

government hospital waiting for the doctor. He decides to learn driving to earn more money for his and family’s betterment. Now even in the present it is not easy for a low born to get job in India easily. Being born in low caste, Balram expelled from various land lords and employers. His big chance comes when a rich Landlord hires him as a chauffeur for his son, daughter-in-law and their two Pomeranian dogs. Balram gets a chance to be free from the shackle of tradition, caste and cultural inferiority. Mr. Ashok who is also the offspring of the 

same soil where Balram was born and raised, but both becomes two opposite poles of the same society. Mr. Ashok, rich, educated and important person of in the society and opposite to him, Balram, poor, least educated and less-important. 

The deprived people never been treated as human being since ages in India. Only

because of their low birth, Balram also treated as animal since his childhood to his grand success as entrepreneur in Bangalore. Mostly such treatment is given him by Mr. Mukesh and Stork, the land lords. The rich expects their pets to be treated as humans, they expects their 

dogs to be pampered, walked, petted, and even washed, but they never treat their servants as human beings. 

Balram escapes from Darkness and drive his master to Delhi, where he sees that in the developed cities also there are slum areas where Slum dogs like Balram lives. There are some people from Darkness too, who came Delhi to survive with the light but they are still away from the equal rights for which Balram is struggling. One day, a child dies in the accident by Pinky Madam but they force Balram to take this accident on his part just to save Pinky getting trapped in the case. Fortunately, no one registers the case otherwise he should 

undergo the punishment for the crime which he didn't perpetrate.

"We have left the villages, but the masters still own us, body, soul and ares."

This dialogue shows how boldly Adiga make satire on the Indian society. Mr. Ashok visits Delhi for the same purpose, to solve his tax problem regarding coal mines. The rich people always visit to Delhi to settle their black money but the deprived goes in the search of light for better life. Adiga rightly describes the conditions of slum dogs.

Pinky Madam becomes bore of Delhi’s atmosphere and asks Ashok to return to New York but he delays. So Pinky leaves for New York, her native, to acquire her own identity and status in the society. Feminists may happy with the female character in The White Tiger that Pinky and Balram’s Grandmother have their own set of rules and life styles. 

Balram is not ready to die as servant, driver or with an identity as a low born member 

of Halwai community. He haunts for the identity, he finds a way to be out of cage to become The White Tiger. He has had Martin Luther’s point of view so he’ll not be satisfied ‘until the justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ Apparently it is clear that the poverty is the only cause to be deprived. 

He thinks:

“Amazing how much money they have‟,

 And yet they treat us like animals."

Balram decides something furious and life changing that we guess from his narration. On the other hand the political changes make Mr. Ashok restless because The Great Socialists become ruling party, which demands seven hundred thousand rupees from him to veil the tax case. Already, city and its life styles have been corrupted 

Balram and made him selfish and evil who decides to steel money from his master. He 

prepares lot for the same and considers it’s an opportunity. Not only he wants to steel money but he put a bottle of visky, Johnnie Walker Black with the purpose to kill Mr. Ashok and escape from the cage to reestablish his own identity. Finally on 

the D day, he does the same and escapes with money. Finally after the murder he settled in Bangalore and became successful entrepreneur with the money stolen from power centre.

It was not easy to acquire identity in the face of strong forces of the society

Balram undertakes various odd jobs like table swiper, coal crusher, servant, chauffer, driver, murderer of his own master, Mr. Ashok. He went through the way of crime because it was needed for his freedom and betterment.

Balram speaks about Buddha‟s philosophy, scared Ganga, Hanuman the Hindu god in the Ramayana as wellas fidelity, love and devotion, which reader as well as Balram, couldn‟t see anywhere it is the feelings of alienation. He had surrendered to the society of the evil like Dr. Faustus in search

of physical luxury. As driver, he had new name given by the society "country mouse". Rootlessness is slowly developed in the mind of the Balram. Cleaned society needs clean clothes but they need not clean mans. Balram changed roles as per demand of the 

period, because he observed on the tea stall, the people use the paper to wrap greasy samosas, wherw written the philosophy 

“May be once in hundred years there is revolution that frees the poor.”

According to Adiga revolution wouldn‟t take place in India because people are waiting for the war which would give him freedom. But it would come from somewhere else. Apathy of related life can be clearly seen on the face of Balram Halwai by through this opinion. He 

became murder, thief by snatching the amount from his master Ashoka whom he considers Ram and Seeta. He founds the white tigers company.

∆ Conclusion..

Arvind Adiga is interested not only in demand of revolution but also change of heart. So Balram Halwai changed many roles, to get value of human beings. Rootlessness, alienation, loss identity, attitude of big bellies made him loose his identity among the hands of corrupt people. So he wrote “I've made it! I‟ve broken out of the coop”, “That's why I was cheated of my destiny to be fact, and creamy skinned 

and smiling.” These lines remarks that he is White Tiger in the society of the beasts. The destruction of the identity laid him to prove existence by hook or crook. He would not want to die like his father suffering from the TB.So he proved his existence with beastly way.

Work cited..

https://www.google.com/amp/s/3rdworldlit.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/identity-in-the-white-tiger/amp/