The novel won Man Booker Prize in 2008, which gives a realistic and graphic picture of some of the canniest truths about India. Balram is the protagonist who tells a story his financial rise and moral deterioration by writing series of letters but never send to Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, who has come to India to learn about the Indian economic miracle so that China can emulate it.
This blog is part of academic activity click here to see worksheet.
(1) How far do you agree with India represented in the novel The White Tiger?
The White Tiger is the famous novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was first published in 2008 and won the 40th Man Booker Prize in the same year. Genre of the novel is “Dark Humor”. India is represented through half-backed Indian ‘Balram Halwai’ in the novel. The India that is presented in the fiction is quite true to the reality. Such as Satire on education, marriage system and suffering of poor children, school corruption, inadequacy of job, Haves v/s Have-nots, master-slave relationship, exploitation of poor people by rich, servants as animals, society as cage, landlords and exploitation of poor people, internalized slavery, satire on Indian police, Dark India v/s Light India etc. these all facts give us glimpse of India in which we are living.
( 2 ) Do you believe that Balram’s story is the archetype of all stories of ‘rags to riches’?
Ans. Yes, Balram’s story becomes the archetype of all stories but We can say only 30 to 40 percent of people can follow the same thing as Balram did especially in the era of Post-truth. People can take as new morality like Balram said. But others can also become a good and well-known person in society through the hard work, think out of the box, intelligence and some time may be luck. For ex-In slumdog millionaire movie, Jamal became rich. Because people of India wants to become reach anyway and that’s why they used lottery tickets or this kind of shows also.
( 3 ) "Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique, deconstructive criticism aims to show that any text inevitably undermines its own claims to have a determinate meaning, and licences the reader to produce his own meanings out of it by an activity of semantic 'freeplay' (Derrida, 1978, in Lodge, 1988, p. 108). Is it possible to do deconstructive reading of *The White Tiger*? How?
Ans. Yes, this text can be deconstructed well. Here is one So here we can say that Balram himself say that he is half baked Indian and author him self said at starting point that – “ This book is Auto – Biography of half – baked Indians”, so how we can believe on his all criticism of dark India. Because he knows only through his own experience. So it’s very narrow views not wider one.
“Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep—all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with. The story of my upbringing is the story of how a half-baked fellow is produced.”
(4). Is it possible to read The White Tiger in context of the Globalization?
Ans. Globalization has two side beneficial and non-beneficial, its defenders present it as generating fresh economic opportunities like rise of Call Centers (outsourcing)and companies give jobs to many people because of LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization), cultural diversity and open up new exiting world. Its critics see globalization as harmful, increased domination and control by wealthy over poor and increasing hegemony of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. It creates relationship of master and slave, person who is in power/rich rule over powerless/poor people. The novel critically analyzes the effects of the capitalism on increasing economy and Balram is representative of the new breed of the globalization who put self before the family for personal growth. We can read a novel from in context of globalization by many aspects like “only two destinies: eat—or get eaten up”, this means you have to take your food/money/economy otherwise you will become food for others.
“For surely any successful man must spill a little blood on his way to the top” , this sentence also describes the way in which many people have done wrong things to reach at top or being successful in this globalised society.
This blog is part of academic activity click here to see worksheet.
(1) How far do you agree with India represented in the novel The White Tiger?
The White Tiger is the famous novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was first published in 2008 and won the 40th Man Booker Prize in the same year. Genre of the novel is “Dark Humor”. India is represented through half-backed Indian ‘Balram Halwai’ in the novel. The India that is presented in the fiction is quite true to the reality. Such as Satire on education, marriage system and suffering of poor children, school corruption, inadequacy of job, Haves v/s Have-nots, master-slave relationship, exploitation of poor people by rich, servants as animals, society as cage, landlords and exploitation of poor people, internalized slavery, satire on Indian police, Dark India v/s Light India etc. these all facts give us glimpse of India in which we are living.
( 2 ) Do you believe that Balram’s story is the archetype of all stories of ‘rags to riches’?
Ans. Yes, Balram’s story becomes the archetype of all stories but We can say only 30 to 40 percent of people can follow the same thing as Balram did especially in the era of Post-truth. People can take as new morality like Balram said. But others can also become a good and well-known person in society through the hard work, think out of the box, intelligence and some time may be luck. For ex-In slumdog millionaire movie, Jamal became rich. Because people of India wants to become reach anyway and that’s why they used lottery tickets or this kind of shows also.
( 3 ) "Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique, deconstructive criticism aims to show that any text inevitably undermines its own claims to have a determinate meaning, and licences the reader to produce his own meanings out of it by an activity of semantic 'freeplay' (Derrida, 1978, in Lodge, 1988, p. 108). Is it possible to do deconstructive reading of *The White Tiger*? How?
Ans. Yes, this text can be deconstructed well. Here is one So here we can say that Balram himself say that he is half baked Indian and author him self said at starting point that – “ This book is Auto – Biography of half – baked Indians”, so how we can believe on his all criticism of dark India. Because he knows only through his own experience. So it’s very narrow views not wider one.
“Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep—all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with. The story of my upbringing is the story of how a half-baked fellow is produced.”
(4). Is it possible to read The White Tiger in context of the Globalization?
Ans. Globalization has two side beneficial and non-beneficial, its defenders present it as generating fresh economic opportunities like rise of Call Centers (outsourcing)and companies give jobs to many people because of LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization), cultural diversity and open up new exiting world. Its critics see globalization as harmful, increased domination and control by wealthy over poor and increasing hegemony of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. It creates relationship of master and slave, person who is in power/rich rule over powerless/poor people. The novel critically analyzes the effects of the capitalism on increasing economy and Balram is representative of the new breed of the globalization who put self before the family for personal growth. We can read a novel from in context of globalization by many aspects like “only two destinies: eat—or get eaten up”, this means you have to take your food/money/economy otherwise you will become food for others.
“For surely any successful man must spill a little blood on his way to the top” , this sentence also describes the way in which many people have done wrong things to reach at top or being successful in this globalised society.
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