The White Tiger - A Critical Response Essay by Kelly Hopkins

The White Tiger A Critical Response Essay

Kelly Hopkins

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga is a 2008 award-winning novel which chronicles protagonist Balram Halwai’s ascent through India’s caste system from a pre-destined life in the “Darkness” (India’s lowest social class) as a poor, uneducated baker to a wealthy and successful entrepreneur in the “Lightness” (India’s upper class). Adiga presents a firstperson narration through a series of letters written by Balram to a Chinese premier. India’s fast-growing economy and successful business landscape has Premier Wen Jiabao visiting India to acquire business advice and guidance from India’s leadership and business elites. Balram feels certain that Jiabao will have much more to gain by gazing at entrepreneurship through his “half-baked” societal scope of India – through the intelligence, experience, and prowess of a “White Tiger.”

Adiga portrays Balram’s hometown of Laxmangahr as deeply immersed in the “Darkness.” Families are close-knit but live in a state of destitution . Access to healthcare and education is virtually nonexistent and jobs are scarce and consist of tedious backbreaking work such as rickshaw pulling and farm labor where “the story of a poor man’s life is written on his body in a sharp pen” (Adiga 22) . The only sense of identity a person has in India is the caste they are born into. The Halwai family is rooted deep in caste darkness with Balram’s parents not even giving him a name when he is born—during childhood, he is simply known as “Munna” (Boy). Balram’s father does however see something special in his son, and he shouts at Grandma Kusum, “How many times have I told you: Munna must read and write!” when she offers a suggestion that Balram quit school and earn money working in the tea shop; this also poses a clue of how “the ‘coop’ is guarded from the inside” (Adiga 23, 166).

A few rays of light glisten and burst through the dark cloud hanging over Balram’s corrupt school with a surprise inspection by a man in a blue safari suit. Balram reads, writes, and communicates with ease and remains un-rattled in the presence of the inspector– “You, young man, are an intelligent, honest vivacious fellow in this crowd of thugs and idiots. In any jungle, what is the rarest of animals – the creature that comes along only once in a generation?” Balram retorts, “The white tiger” (Adiga 30). The praise he receivesfrom the inspector lays a foundation of confidence for Balram.

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He begins to demonstrate his social entrepreneurial savviness by utilizing tenacity and a sleek salesmanship aptitude to become a driver for a rich coal mining family in the “Light” of Bangalore and New Delhi. Balram gradually becomes an entrepreneur – “Darkness-style . ”

As driver/servant for Mr . Ashok, Balram becomes woven into the daily lives of his wealthy master and his family, consisting of wife Pinky, his brother, The Mongoose, and his father, The Stork . Balram quickly learns by observing and listening that greed, selfishness, and a zero tolerance policy for good ethics are the only behaviors and attitudes that ensure a spot at the top of the food chain in “jungle law.” Although Balram respects and looks up to Ashok as a person he would like to emulate, he is also keenly observing Ashok for any weakness in his character, which Balram will later exploit in the story for financial gain—a smart move for Balram? He is, after all, an “entrepreneur . ”

Adiga casts a shadow of darkness over the “Light” India by illustrating an upper class society rife with corruption, bribery, extortion, racketeering, and moral decadence throughout India’s judicial system, law enforcement, and government (Sarkar 3). The exchanging of cash-filled “red bags” between the elites in the “Light” is customary as they scratch each other’s backs. In spite of corruption, there is a team-like cooperation among India’s “Light” ensuring all of India’s wealth remains at the top one percent. “There are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat – or get eaten up” (Adiga 54) .

Religion is a source of societal manipulation and generates a smokescreen thicker than the choking smog hanging over the traffic-heavy roads of Delhi. The “Light” secretly want the “Dark” to have a sense of false hope and to believe that Hindu’s

“36,000,000” gods are the saviors that will guide them out of their sewage-lined streets

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and fix the defunct hospitals, electricity poles, and water taps. In glaring contrast, Ashok exclaims to The Mongoose while riding inside the Honda City vehicle, “We’re driving past Gandhi, after just having given a bribe to a minister. It’s a freaking joke, isn’t it” (Adiga 115) . Balram is not genuinely interested in religion but rather uses religion as a means to appease and entertain his master Ashok, who shows a shallow interest in the lives of the common folk . Balram parallels gods to masters who need servants to appease them (Haitham 28) .

Manipulation of the notion of “family” is also common in India . The “Light” placate servants by referring to them as “family,” yet they will throw servants under the bus in a heartbeat. A cover-up is put in place when Pinky is driving drunk and runs over and kills a child – Balram takes the fall – “My life had been written away. I was to go to jail for a killing I had not done” (Adiga 151) . Disobedience from a servant towards his master (or master’s family) results in the servant’s family members being severely beaten and/or killed . Furthermore, the “Dark” set up marriages with the wedding dowries in mind (for a very short-lived big belly of financial relief). Grandma Kusum pushes her family members to marry when they are not ready without any consideration for the long-term consequences . She also plays a part in the framing of Balram for the Pinky incident, throws numerous money and marriage guilt-trips at Balram, and even tricks him into becoming the guardian for his cousin Dharam . Family is one of the primary reasons why the “Rooster Coop” is one of the most profitable enterprises in India .

The Rooster Coop is the life blood of Indian society; the ‘Coop’ is where the low caste works menial jobs day-in and day-out serving the upper caste . A combination of fear, internal fighting, and undermining keep the “Dark” trapped inside the Coop . Only a rare breed of society can escape the Coop—a White Tiger. Balram declares, “I’m a

man of action and change” (Adiga 3) . Martin and Osberg acknowledge, “The entrepreneur is inspired to alter the unpleasant equilibrium . Sometimes entrepreneurs are so gripped by the opportunity to change things that they possess a burning desire to demolish the status quo . The entrepreneur thinks creatively and develops a new solution that dramatically breaks with the existing one” (7).

As The White Tiger progresses, the pieces of Balram’s numerous chandeliers begin to crystalize together, so to speak, and the only way a person of India’s “Darkness” can escape the oppression of the Coop is to prioritize wealth and power over morals. In addition, Balram’s Darkness-style entrepreneurism is much more than crime and corruption – it exemplifies murder. Although Balram strongly believes in his abilities as a businessman, it is unrealistic for people of the “Darkness” to show up at a bank in the “Light” and expect the bank to loan them the rupees needed for business start-up funding . Ashok’s time is drawing near—a dark and twisted (and criminal) means to an end—or in Balram’s case, a new beginning.

A scene early in the story at the school’s classroom portrays a young Balram as petrified from a lizard on the loose; however, when his father tries to kill the lizard, Balram shouts, “Don’t kill it Daddy – please!” (Adiga 25) . The father did not listen and “[p]ounded it with a pot of toddy until the pot broke. He smashed its neck with his f ist . He stamped on its head” (Adiga 26) . This is foreshadowing of Ashok’s death as Balram eventually overcomes his fears within the Coop by pounding and slitting Ashok’s head and neck with a broken bottle of scotch in order to steal his red bag filled with money. Game over for Ashok. The welcome mat rolls out for Balram in the “Light” as he starts a very successful and lucrative taxi company. Balram’s father asserts, “My whole life, I have been treated like a donkey. All I want is that one son of mine – at least one – should live like a man” (Adiga 26) . Balram does not quite understand what his father means in that moment, but it connects subtly for him later during one of his mall escapades with Ashok when he notices a nearby construction site with families of donkeys “saddled with metal troughs of rubble” (Adiga 164). At the end of the novel, Balram feels that he is a success by “not taking the lashes his father took” but also expresses some shreds of sorrow for murdering Ashok, “it has darkened my soul” (Adiga 273) . Ultimately, Balram depicts no regret– “all I wanted was the chance to be a man – and for that, one murder was enough” (Adiga 274) . Demonstrating that a “university” education is not a necessary ingredient in the recipe of life and that a “half-baked” (School of Hard Knocks) experience can be sufficient enough in the world of entrepreneurism, Balram knows that he is worth much more than a low-skill servant life and deserves more. Balram exhibits the indispensable traits of the veritable Indian entrepreneur—confidence, competitiveness, vision, determination, self-motivation, people skills, motivation, and resourcefulness—along with the requisites of crime, corruption, a lack of morals and ethics, and murder—a winning combination in Adiga’s India. Breaking out of the Coop and traversing the border separating “Dark” and “Light” requires a person who is willing to risk it all and choose money, power, and individual freedom over family—only a rare species in the world can survive and thrive in this jungle—The White Tiger.

Works Cited Adiga, Aravind. The White Tiger. Free Press, 2008. Haitham, Hind, “Discourse of Entrepreneurship in The White Tiger.” Thesis and Dissertations. Lehigh Preserve, 2013, https://preserve.lib. lehigh.edu/islandora/object/preserve%3Abp-7256358. Accessed 10 Oct. 2018. Martin, Roger L, and Sally Osberg. “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2007, pp. 1–13., ssir.org/articles/entry/ social_entrepreneurship_the_case_for_definition. Accessed 10 Oct. 2018. Sarkar, Sushil. “The Theme of Corruption and Moral Decadence in Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 3. no.4, 2012, pp. 3, https://core.ac.uk/ download/pdf/229681057.pdf. Accessed 10 Oct. 2018.