To evaluate my assignment please click here.
Name:
Mehta Kavita Dineshbhai.
Course: M.A English
Semester: 4
Batch: 2016 – 2018
Roll No: 10
Enrollment No: 2069108420170020
Submitted to: SMT S.B Gardi.
Department of English, MKBhav Uni
Email id: kavitamehta164@gmail.com
Paper no:13
The New Literature.
Topic: The white Tiger: A Tale of two Indias.
Introduction About the novel:
The white Tiger, the Booker prize winning novel 2008 by
Aravind Adiga, has generated tremendous response both in literary and academic
circles. Critics have been equally lavish in praising the book as they have
been in condemning it. Hailed as extraordinary and brilliant, thrilling, and
insightful, witty and unpretentious, the novel is considered as one of the most
powerful books published in the recent years. The present book offers varied
interpretations of the novel by eminent Indian critics and is a welcome
addition to the fast growing corpus of Indian English fiction.
The White Tiger is a tale of
two Indias. This novel is framed as a narrative letter, Balram Halwai, whose
unique, sarcastic voice carries the reader through his life in “new India.”This
novel divided in to eight chapters.
The
first night
The
second night
The
fourth morning
The
forth night
The
fifth night
The
sixth morning
The
sixth night
The
seventh night.
The White Tiger: A tale of Two Indias.
Aravind won the man booker prize 2008 for his novel the white
tiger which is darkly humorous novel about a man’s journey from Indian village
life to entrepreurial success. Aravind won the man booker prize 2008
for his novel the white tiger it is Adiga fifth novel at such an early age,
which deals with the present day India.
The book is a tale of two
Indias: the India of Darkness, an India of utter poverty, associated with the
fictitious village of Laxmangarh in the Gaya district. The River Ganga, the
‘black river’, as the book puts it, dominates the landscape of this India where
water buffaloes are treated better than humans, schools don’t have any chairs
and open air sewage flows through the middle of the streets. The second India
is the India of Light, the emerging India with its call centers and booming
technology companies, associated with Bangalore.
Much of the irony and criticism
in the book is dependent on and at the expense of the narrator and the book’s
narrative style. Told in first person by Balram Halwai, as we come to know him
for most of the story, the book takes the form of seven letters telling the
narrator’s life story, addressed to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who is to
make a visit to India from his ‘Freedom Loving Nation of China’ in order to
understand the phenomenon of entrepreneurship. Adiga wields acid, sarcastic
humor like a weapon in order to make his point on the nature of Indian society.
Being its focalizing
agent, the character of Balram is intrinsically important to the novel. He is a
traumatized character having lost both father and mother to poverty and to
Mother Ganga’s black mud. Balram is most definitely an unreliable narrator as
his account of his life is told in retrospective and, therefore, tinted by
hindsight. He is a character of dichotomies: he is a free thinker but at the
same time superstitious; intelligent but uneducated; rich but with poor taste;
an endearing character but ultimately a psychopath. Like the white tiger, with
which he is associated, he is a creature of black and white, light and darkness.
We learn that Balram did not
have a name until he was named by his school teacher. He was simply called
Munna, which means boy. His teacher, Krishna, then names him Balram, a god
known as being the sidekick of the god Krishna, effectively making him a
servant. He later gains another name, white tiger, from which the title of the
book stems from, and which is given to him by a government official visiting
his school, who deems him to be the smartest child in the village. This name effectively
alienates him from the other poor people and also alludes to the predatory
beast he eventually becomes. His final name, the name he goes under after
becoming an entrepreneur, is that of his late master, who he murdered himself,
Ashok. Thus in The White Tiger a person’s very identity is dependant of his
position in society.
Balram had a dream to become a driver
and he could fulfill his dream only by getting employment. He earned money,
learned driving and got the job as a second driver in the family of landlord.
The protagonist had only one dream to drive Honda City, but senior driver Ram
Prasad was the driver of Honda City, so he got Maruti Zen. Ashok the elder son
of the Landlord returns back to India after completing his education from
America with a Christian girl Pinky Mam. Ashok and Pinky decided to live in
Delhi. In the meantime the landlord came to know that actually their senior
driver Ram Prasad who was living there as a Hindu actually was a Muslim. When
Ram Prasad was exposed he ran away to Dhandad and in this way Balram got the
opportunity to drive Honda City of his master Ashok.
Delhi corrupted Ashok because
he learnt the trick how to take work from political leaders, ministers,
brokers, police and judges. Once pinky Madam smashes a child while she is
heavily drunk, but Balram is compelled to take the blame of this accident on
himself. But there is a nexus with police and judges and the case is solved. So
nothing happens to anyone. Thus the novel exposes the corruption in this
country which is deeply rooted in the politics. Pinky Mam becomes tired of this
system and returns back to New York without informing Ashok. Now Balram becomes
puzzled, wanders here and there, and goes to paharganj, not far from the Imperial
Hotel. He sees the life of the people lying on the floor of the station, dogs
were sniffing at the garbage and then he thinks about his destination without
the job of the driver. He describes to Mr. Premier about Delhi:
Delhi is the capital of not one but two
countries two Indias. The light and the darkness both flow in to Delhi.
Gurgaon, where Mr. Ashok lived, in the end of the city, and this place, old
Delhi, in the other end. Full of things that the modern world forgot all about
rickshaws, old stone buildings, and stone buildings, and Muslims.
Slum becomes the
topic of discussion during election months and rest of the months is only for
the rich and the politicians. All these are facts, and the young writer Aravind
Adiga dares to depict the real situation of dark India. This dark side to need
light. His novel is fact not fiction. Attacking on the false commitment of
politicians during election and daily problem of poor the author writes: “the
election shows that the poor will not be ignored. The darkness will not be
silent. There is no water in our taps, and what do you people in Delhi give us?
You give us mobile phones. Can man drink phone when he is thirsty? Woman walks
for miles very morning to find a bucket of clean water.”
India is developing but
Bharat needs better education and facilities regarding the roles and rights.
There is problem of population which needs revaluation. Poor India doesn’t care
for the better education of their children. Adiga writes: ‘I don’t think so,
sir. You know how those people in the Darkness are they have eight, nine, ten
children’s sometimes they don’t know the names of their own children. While
driving for Mr. Ashok, Balram becomes familiar with the ways of the great men,
so he also wants to enjoy the freedom and start going to whores. He need money
and one day murders his master, takes all his money and goes to Bangalore. In
Bangalore he does the work of a taxi contractor. He becomes famous as Ashok
Sharma. He says: “once I was a driver to a master, but now I am a master of
drivers.”
There are two sides of
anything the dark side and the bright side.
Adiga has tried to tell the story of the dark India. Fact is stronger than
fiction. Every now and then, we read stories in newspapers which we find
difficult to believe, but most of them are true. The fact is that our world is
full of wonders and mysteries. Fiction is the result of facts. Literature
mirrors society and this real picture of India is shown to us by Aravind Adiga.
He writes: India is dealing with great
duality today. There are men with big belies and men with small bellies. It’s a
metaphor to capture the duality of human existence in India today. The world
needed to see the other side of India.”
Thus the writer narrates
openly about the rich and the poor. Middle class is somehow away from the bad
habits Men drink because they are sick of life. Once the saying “Honesty is the
best policy “was applicable but in today’s world only honest man suffers. The
writer says about police: There is no
end to things in India, as Mr.Ashok used to say. You can give the police all the
brown envelop and red bags you want and they might still screw you. a man in a
uniform may one day point a finger at me and say, Time’s up , Munna.
Aravind Adiga writes candidly
about Delhi police. He narrates to Mr. Jiabao, ‘The main thing to know about
Delhi is that the roads are good, and the people are bad. The police are
totally rotten. Balram says that if police sees anyone without a seat belt, one
has to bribe them a hundreds rupees. Balram is a loyal son, so he works in a
tea shop to help his father, but he also wants to make his life better and
becomes a driver. Here he is also loyal towards his master, rather he worships
his master, but the reward which he gets from his master, changes his attitude
of life and he learn a new morality of modern life. He is forced to take the
obligation of accident. Adiga says that the jails of Delhi are full of drivers
who are there behind bars because they are taking the blame for their good
solid middle class master. Democracy has no meaning for the poor. Balram had to
take the obligation because he was loyal as a dog. He was the perfect servant.
Adiga writes about the corruption in the judicial system: “The Judges? Wouldn’t
they see through this confection? But they are in the racket too. They take
their bribe; they ignore the discrepancies in the case. And life goes on.”
The writer is young and
daring, he raised voice against the system and wrote openly about the
corruption which is in the political thinking during last fifty years. They try
to fool public. They promote the bribe system and train the poor innocent
people like balram to get involved in this corruption. Balram in hope of better
life learns this new morality. The writer describes about the honesty of the
poor people, poor driver and their loyalty towards their masters. He says that
the trustworthiness of servants is the basis of Indian economy: “master trust
their servant with diamonds in this country its true. Every evening on the
train out of Surat, where they run the world biggest diamond cutting and
polishing business, the servants of diamond merchants are carrying suitcase
full of cut diamonds that they have to give to someone in Mumbai. Why doesn’t that
servant take the suitcase full of diamonds?
He is no Gandhi, he is human, he is you and me”. In this way Aravind
Adiga has tried to tell a very real story, a tale of two Indias.
Work cited:
Eduardo, Lima. A
TALE OF TWO INDIAS: THE WHITE TIGER. January 2010. 29 March 2018
<https://edessays.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/lima2010_review-the-white-tiger.pdf>.
No comments:
Post a Comment