COURSE: M.A ENGLISH
SEMESTER: 4
BATCH: 2016-2018
ENROLMENT NO- 2069108420170010
SUBMITTED TO – Dr. Dilip Barad
SMT .S.B.GARDI
SMT .S.B.GARDI
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
MAHARAJA KRISHNAKUMARSINHJI BHAVNAGER UNIVERSITY
EMAIL ID –BinkalbaGohil1995@Gmail.Com
PARER NO-13 The New literature.
TOPIC:” Character study of Balram Halwai”.
Introduction:
Aravind Adiga in his debut novel The White Tiger, which earned him Man Booker Prize 2008, is considered one of the most powerful books of the present decades. The book represents the brutal truths and realistic picture of India.
According to Adiga, “This novel had been the fruit of his labours as a reporter in India” Balram Halwai in Indian society by raising the essential issues like social inequalities and injustice based on the class, caste and religion. Also describes how Adiga illustrates the discrimination among rich and poor and how rich dominating the poor and they came out of the “Rooster Coop” in defence, either by murdering their masters or betrayal of one’s family.
Balram likes Chinese’s freedom and individual liberty. He knows that British tried a lot to make Chinese their servants, but they never succeed. This is the main reason that Balram appreciates China and narrates his life to
Journey of Balram Halwai Rage to riches:
Person goes there because of they wanted to money. Balram How to reach where he is so that confessional mode telling the process because they done several wrong things.
Balram himself say I am half back of India a person with an incomplete understanding. who sees the world is incomplete. We do not get 360 degree viewpoint of everything only single dimension of happening. and so it loose stone we can break that half baked individual cannot have 360 degree of view.
He calls himself heartbreak but he himself tells it becomes very strong loose stone. in the narrative with perhaps Adiga has beautifully put inside. Adidas says I am not saying but it is bal ram’s point of view Balram is half baked Indian he is not anther angel to looking everything look from his. Balram represent patriarchy male identity of India and then how it looked towards other female also.
Balram does not use the name Balram Halawi, when he introduces himself to the Chinese Prime Minister. But he uses a nickname, the ‘White Tiger’. This becomes his grand narrative; the way he identifies himself. However, this nickname, this identification with a tiger, is not his original invention; but comes from his school as a reward for his ability to read. Thus he awarded the title of a white tiger for his distinction.
Sometimes, he believes that he is the representative of ordinary men from the dominated classes, and at the other time, he believes that he is the exception to them; he is a white tiger, a unique animal among his species. On the other hand, Balram’s father did not know the difference between animal and lower class, and Balram knows that, but he does not excuse him. This is the first movement of Balram towards Ashok’s class: he believes that his father raised him to live like an animal, and never realise that they are living as such. Because he does not recognise that he is a human being and his life is different than that of animals, he deserves better.
When Balram is in Laxmangarh he is living in darkness, begins his journey without a name; his family called him “Munna” or “boy”. In fact, a school teacher has to name him, later, a local official decides on his date of birth in order to facilitate the stealing of his vote. But in Bangalore and Delhi, he comes in light. Here everything is supposed to be perfect, with its big hotels, multi-storey buildings, call centres, mall, and high tech area etc. whereas, India lives in villages and all the city glamour are due to the disintegration of village life.
After experiencing with both rural and urban India, Balram concludes that there are only two castes in modern India. The traditional importance of caste has been increasingly replaced by that of class. Balram points out: In the old days, there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat—or get eaten up”
The final incident changes the Balram’s life to a greater extent, in which Ashok’s wife accidentally killed a nameless poor person on the road. His brutal master Ashok suggests that Balram takes the fall for the crime so that they have free from all the charges and insults. But this incident forces Balram into an even deeper turmoil of despair and anger.
This anger rises at its peak when Balram finally does kill his master by the roadside, proclaims immediately that now he is a free man. Davis Mike observed, “If the poor are victims of poverty, that poverty also makes them criminals, in part as a result of the illegality of unplanned, slum housing and the criminal networks which allow the poor to defend themselves”
Adiga’s book The White Tiger deals with precisely the morality and effects of the actions displayed in this passage. It is a powerful idea and a controversial one that murder and other immoral actions can be justified by extreme circumstances like poverty.
Balram realises himself that he would be exploited to do so in which his master did not see him as a part of the family. At last Balram asserts “the greatest thing to come out of this country in the ten thousand years of its history is the ‘Rooster Coop” Masters blackmail their servants to send money home and forced them to do things what they want. Adiga also explores the very way in which masters control their servants and protect themselves from murder is the threat of violence against the servant’s family.
As a result, poor people are the trap in the rooster coop and do not resist to be destroyed by the big bellies. Balram compares small bellies with roosters in old Delhi, behind Jama Masjid, where they are stuffed tightly as the roosters in the coop smell blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.
The same thing happens with the human in this country. They are enslaved in their own minds and consider it their birthright to live and die for their masters in everlasting subjugation. Consequently, he is able to justify his action that suppresses instinctive feelings of loyalty to his master and responsibility to family’s death.
According to Adiga, caste system determines a person’s social and economic status. Balram inherited caste is ‘Halwai’ or ‘sweet maker’ which is considered as men with small bellies and that makes him far away from the opportunity to succeed. Thus the only way to break this irreversible cycle, one must take drastic action which in Balram’s case is to murder his master and take his money as well as identity. In fact, it’s a dark book as Balram compromises with wrong to cross over to the bright side.
Balram’s family members also become terrible victims of their landlord’s exploitation. Balram also suffers such exploitation, dropped from the school and ask to work in a tea stall to pay off his father’s debt to their landlord. Thus Adiga draws our attention to the severe poverty that exists in India.
According to Balram, the darkness represents those areas of rural India where education and electricity are inadequate, and where villagers crosstalk about local elections “like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, which is proved to be true, when a rickshaw-puller decided to cast his vote and was brutally murdered. Actually the main difference between “Darkness” and “Light” is that in “Light,” people are free to cast their own vote but according to Balram in “Darkness” people are not free by themselves to give their vote: “I am India’s most faithful voter and I still have not seen the inside of a voting booth”
Conclusion:
To conclude it can be said that The White Tiger is a story about the predicament of Balram Halwai who narrates his story from “darkness to light,” “rags to riches,” transforming from a village tea shop boy into a Bangalore entrepreneur. His spring up from a poor village boy to a successful entrepreneur is not at all easy but hard-hitting struggle to unconstrained from brutal society.
At the end of the novel, Balram makes a prediction that at last, his life is totally free from white man. Adiga indirectly advocates changes in the social, economic and political system by abolishing individual vices, social evils and disintegrating system. All the issues raised by Adiga are prevalent in the whole chapter and are to be understood with their complexity and addressed properly by the protagonist Balram.
Works Cited
DEVI, RAJNI and RAJNII DEVI. Internatinal for english Language Literature and Humanities. 7 2017. 13 3 2018 <http://ijellh.com/OJS/index.php/OJS/article/view/2112>.
Haitham, Hind. Lehigh University. 1 9 2013. 13 3 2018 <https://preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2499&context=etd>.
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