The White Tiger is the debut novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was first published in 2008 and won the 40th Man Booker Prize in the same year. The novel provides a darkly humorous perspective of India’s class struggle in a globalized world.
About The White Tiger (Adiga novel) in brief
The White Tiger is the debut novel by Indian author Aravind Adiga. It was first published in 2008 and won the 40th Man Booker Prize in the same year. The novel provides a darkly humorous perspective of India’s class struggle in a globalized world. Balram Halwai narrates his life in a letter, written in seven consecutive nights and addressed to the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. In his letter, Balram explains how he, the son of a puller, escaped a life of servitude to become a successful businessman. The White Tiger has been well-received, making the New York Times bestseller list in addition to winning the Man Booker prize in 2008. Adiga says his novel attempts to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India — theVoice of the colossal underclass. In a nation proudly shedding a history of poverty and underdevelopment, he represents, as he himself says, ‘tomorrow.’ The novel takes place in a time in which increased technology has led to globalization and India is no exception. In the past decade, India has had the fastest growing economy of any country in the world, with the exception of the U.S. The book ends with the reader thinking of the dark humour of the tale, as well as the idea of freedom as a trap for the poor in a world where technology has made it possible for anyone to be a millionaire in less than a decade. It has been described as a ‘darkly humorous tale of India’s class struggle’ and ‘a tale of the rise and fall of the middle class’ in a nation that has been plagued by poverty and inequality for more than a century.
The novel examines issues of the Hindu religion, caste, loyalty, corruption and poverty in India. Balram transcends his sweet-maker caste and becomes a successful entrepreneur, establishing his own taxi service in Bangalore, where he pays off the police in order to help start his own business. The story ends with Balram rationalizing his actions and considering that his life is worth the lives of his family of Ashok and his wife Pinky Madam, and thus the letter to Jiab Yao ends the way it began. In the end, the reader is left with the idea that Balram’s life as a businessman is worth more than his family’s lives, and that the story ends in a way that makes sense to both Balram and Ashok. Balram is portrayed as being trapped in the metaphorical Rooster Coop: his family controls what he does and society dictates how he acts. In Delhi, the contrast between the poor and the wealthy is made even more evident by their proximity to one another. Ashok becomes increasingly involved in bribing government officials for the benefit of the family coal business, and Balram then decides that killing Ashok will be the only way to escape India’s Roosters in a coop.
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