Arvind Adiga Character Analysis

2336 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Effects of poverty on individuals

The debut novel by Arvind Adiga was published in 2008 and talks about the life of Balram Halwai, the son of an auto rickshaw puller who lived in a village in Dhanbad with his grandmother, parents, brother and extended family. The story has been told from Balram’s point of view who spent his childhood in ‘darkness’-in the impoverished area of rural India-in poverty and illiteracy, as he had to drop out of his school because his family had to arrange for his cousin’s dowry and so they couldn’t afford to pay for his education. His name itself is the proof that the dominant caste system in India has divided its population into higher and lower social classes. Balram’s frustration is evident from the fact that he critizes the caste system and points …show more content…

Thus, It is extreme poverty which creates Darkness in the life of the rural as well as urban people and it perpetuates the sufferings of the underclass. Illiteracy, unemployment, Zamindari practice, social taboos,rigid caste discrimination, caste and culture conflict, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats,economic disparity , superstitions, corrupt education system and health services,shrewd entrepreneurs, flood mall culture etc contribute to the sufferings of

Show More
Related

  • The Struggles of Families in Poverty in The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

    1135 Words  | 3 Pages

    The most obvious effect of poverty remains the material aspect. The family has no money, therefore they cannot afford a good of decent quality. They can only purchase subpar goods. The family gets cheated numerous times in money related incidents. The housing agent cheats them the most, as they must pay much more money then he told them they would. Not only do they get cheated on the insurance, but they pay much more for the house than the value of it. The bosses cheat them as well: “big businesses had become even bigger. Large corporations were making a great deal of money, and some owners and managers became very rich. However, most of the people working in business and industry were not getting rich” (Duyne). When problems arise with the house, the family can only buy cheap goods to fix them with. When the...

    Read More

  • Conventional Common Wisdom

    1433 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although poverty has minimized, it is still significant poverty which is characterized by a numerous amount of things. There are two types of poverty case and insular. “Case poverty is the farm family with the junk-filled yard and the dirty children playing in the bare dirt” (Galbraith 236)Case poverty is not irretraceable and usually caused if someone in the household experiences “ mental deficiency, bad health, inability to adapt to the discipline of industrial life, uncontrollable procreation, alcohol, some educational handicap unrelated to community shortcomings” (Galbraith 236).Case poverty is often blamed on the people for their shortcomings but on some levels can be to pinpoint one person's shortcomings that caused this poverty. Most modern poverty is insular and is caused by things people in this community cannot control. “The most important characteristic of insular poverty is forces, common to all members of the community, that restrain or prevent participation in economic life and increase rates of return.

    Read More

  • Intellectual Empathy In The White Tiger By Aravind Adiga

    1440 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga our protagonist struggles in his journey to adulthood. Born to a rickshaw puller who ends up dying of tuberculosis due to government corruption, Balram sets his sights to become somebody better than his father–– someone who wears the uniform–– as he’s a smart person and an entrepreneur. On his journey, he is confronted with many difficult decisions which help him discover the kind of person that he is; while also learning how corrupt the upper class is and how that has to do with the government. In the end he succeeds and goes from a rooster in the Rooster Coop, to somebody who 's broken out and made it–– out of the darkness, into the light. However, this doesn

    Read More

  • The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

    982 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga the main character, is Balram, one of the children in the “darkness” of India. Adiga sheds a new light on the poor of India, by writing from the point of view of a man who was at one time in the “darkness” or the slums of India and came into the “light” or rich point of view in India. Balram’s job as a driver allows him to see both sides of the poverty line in India. He sees that the poor are used and thrown away, while the rich are well off and have no understanding of the problems the poor people must face. The servants are kept in a mental “Rooster Coop” by their masters. The government in India supposedly tries to help the poor, but if there is one thing Adiga proves in The White Tiger, it is that India’s government is corrupted. Despite the government promises in India designed to satisfy the poor, the extreme differences between the rich and the poor and the idea of the Rooster Coop cause the poor of India to remain in the slums.

    Read More

  • Poverty and Classism

    758 Words  | 2 Pages

    Most people of the society still blame the poor for their own predicament. They believe that "if there is a will there is a way". However, they do not think about their government that might had made bad decisions and policies that could actually harm successful development. This causes of poverty and inequality are usually less discussed and often neglected. We must recognize the effects poverty could have on the society and seek ways to create better understanding and resolve the issue before it is too late.

    Read More

  • Discuss the way Adige has utilized literary techniques to position his audience to respond to Balram in this way.”

    1330 Words  | 3 Pages

    Aravind Adiga’s novel, The White Tiger, discusses the life of entrepreneurial India, Balram. Moving from a weak frightened boy living in what he calls the ‘darkness’, a place of poverty and cruel leaders, he moves up the social hierarchy to the point were he becomes a CEO of a large business corporation. In a letter format to a Chinese minister he conveys his personal thoughts on India’s corruption, the difficulty of social mobility and the change in his own person identity during his life. The readers of this text are forced to form an emotional bond with the protagonist and empathises with him to the extent that a friendship is formed between the two. This bond is achieved through many different literary techniques used by Adiga such as monologue, the plot and the imagery achieved throughout his writing to develop Balram’s character as a likeable person.

    Read More

  • Injustice And Poverty In Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    Aravind Adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger highlights his views of the injustice and poverty present in India’s class system. He does this through the perspective of Balram Halwai, a fictional village boy from Laxmangarh. In this epistolary novel, Balram narrates his life in the form of a seven-part letter addressed to Wen Jiabao, the premier of China. He describes how he escaped his caste, which was thought to be impossible, and became a successful entrepreneur after killing his own master. The inequality between rich and poor is an important motive of the story. This paper will go in depth into the representation of the poor, the motivation for it and the effects it has on the interpretation of the story.

    Read More

  • The White Tiger

    1077 Words  | 3 Pages

    This story shows how the rich aims to oppress the lower class, only the rich get a proper education, the rich has all the power and imposes it on the poor. The rich aims to oppress and keep the poor in servitude Balram feels that there

    Read More

  • Escaping Poverty: The Importance of Location

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    Around the world, people are born into poverty against their own will. The location in which they are born will determine the level of difficulty in escaping their poverty. The caste system is a well-known way of life associated with Hindus, who are predominantly found in India. India is known to have the most extreme poverty conditions in the world, and the caste system makes it hard to escape such poverty. However, North Americans do not have such problems because of the opportunities that are offered, and the less obvious classifying of society. Location is an essential component when it comes to whether a person will be doomed to hardship or will eventually escape.

    Read More

  • The White Tiger Essay

    771 Words  | 2 Pages

    The White Tiger is highly critical of modern India, focusing how people succeed by any means. With his constant references to the events that see Balram’s rise from servant to entrepreneur; Adiga explores the way Balram risking his family’s life in killing Ashok is apparently acceptable in this corrupt and injustice society. Because it is the only way to achieve succeed as well as the way to shake off the family ties and maser-servant relation ship that bind him. However it is mentally unacceptable that he only breaks free of these through his selfish and immoral behavior.

    Read More

  • The Novel: The White Tiger, By Balram Halwai

    3485 Words  | 7 Pages

    He commences his journey in the novel as a nursery school kid. He enacts several roles such as a “human spider” at the tea stall, a car driver of a landlord-cum-coal thief, the Stork, the homemaid and ends his journey as the big entrepreneur. Adiga portrays the protagonist as the man who does not succumb to the herd mentality. He explores a unique species in Balram, which made him distinct from the village herd. He attempts to revive Nietzsche’s Ubermensch in Balram, who is free spirited and never yields to the herd mentality; who is released from the chains of traditions and ideology; who breaks the rusted codes of the society and creates new values with a sense of uniqueness and passion for life. The present paper is an attempt to portray Balram as a moral

    Read More

  • Arjie’s Journey in Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy

    2439 Words  | 5 Pages

    Growing up during a time of violent political upheaval in Sri Lanka, Arjie travels an especially bittersweet journey into maturation in Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy. The adults in Arjie’s extended family mostly belong to an older, more conservative generation that attempts to fit Arjie into society’s norms. The adults that Arjie meets in the community through his family are individuals who prompt him to see past the confines of his childhood, and it is Arjie’s peers who give him the extra push to understanding himself. With guidance from his extended family, his adult friends, and his peers, Arjie is able to discover his identity through understanding the impact of race and gender on his life.

    Read More

  • The White Tiger Essay

    602 Words  | 2 Pages

    Balram gains his resemblance to a “white tiger” due to his rare intellect among his generation of “thugs and idiots”. Thus, Balram is seen to have been given a chance to initiate his way to ‘light’. Balram who reveals his family as a restriction to becoming successful, learns that he must use corruption to “live like a man” and learns his real education of the world on the “roads and pavement”. Consequently, education stagnates the low social class of India leaving them to live lives of survival rather than pleasant

    Read More

  • Things Fall Apart Power Essay

    1509 Words  | 4 Pages

    Caste and religion play a significant importance in social-cultural practices in India. Matthew harasses Ammu and says "If I were you, I'd go home quietly, then he

    Read More

  • Theoretical Literature Review: The Definition Of Poverty

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is also characterised by absence of participation in community decision making and in civil, social, economical and cultural life. It may occurs in all countries: as mass poverty in majority developing countries, pockets of poverty amid wealth in advanced countries, loss of livelihoods as a result from economic recession, sudden poverty as a result from disaster and conflict, the poverty of low-wage market workers, and the utter destitution of people who fall outside family assistance systems, social institutions and safety nets (WB, 2000).

    Read More

More about Arvind Adiga Character Analysis

Open Document