White Tiger Sparknotes

Aravind Adiga uses his novel, The White Tiger, to create a cautionary tale. In his work of fiction Adiga tries to shed some light on parts of India that we wouldn’t normally see. In an article written by Ann Mandelstamm for Occasional Planet, Mandelstamm writes that the book “is chilling because it reveals a society in which the poorest classes have little hope of ever improving their lives”. I agree that Adiga is using the main character, Balram Halwai’s, narrative to show us the negatives of India’s society by writing about a higher education system that doesn’t get you very far in India, the corrupt and inadequate health care facilities, the poverty, and the deceitful and hurtful ways people gain power. Adiga begins to tell us about …show more content…
Throughout the entire novel it talks about bribing police officers, and in one case it was to gain ground in political standings. “Would they do it this time? Would they beat the Great Socialist and win the elections? Had they raised enough money of their own, and bribed enough policemen” (page 106). Later on in the story Balram’s is riding in a car with his employer, Mr. Stork, and his wife. The wife, Madam Pinky, is driving drunk and breaking many traffic laws. As a result of her recklessness she hits a human that tried crossing the streets, and instead of calling it into the police they flee the scene and leave the adult or child to die. Later Balram is called upon by his master and he thinks that he is going to be turned into the police as the one who had been driving when the hit and run occurred. However, this was not the news he received. “We have a contact in the police—he’s told us that no one has reported seeing the accident. So your help won’t be needed, Balram” (page 183). This shows that the police were in the pockets of the rich because Mr. Stork had contacts within the system. We also saw this kind of corruption when when our class watched the movie, Slumdog Millionaire. The main character in the movie, Jamal, is being beaten and tortured by the police for knowing the answers to every question on the gameshow. The police were …show more content…
Stork Pinky Madam around, Adiga uses some of the sights that Balram sees to show us some more of the poverty that India faces. Balram tells us about the thousands of people that live on the streets in Delhi. He says that you can tell they are homeless by “their thin bodies, filthy faces, by the animal-like way they live under the huge bridges and overpass, making fires and washing and taking lice out of their hair while the cars roar past them” (page 124). These people are living in rough, dangerous conditions because they cannot find jobs and, due to this, they are forced to try and make money by selling things on the sides of the streets. “Under the glare of naked yellow lightbulbs, men squatted on the road, selling basketfuls of glassy bangles, steel bracelets, toys, head scarves, pens, and key chains” (page 155). This is not the only time Balram tells us about people selling things on the side of the road, and there is a time someone walked in the street up to the car. “A beggar child had come up to the Honda City.. Every night in Delhi, beggars are always selling something by the roadside, books or statues or strawberries in boxes” (page 165). Even children are forced to live on the sides of the streets and sell anything they can just to try make some money. This is very powerful in Adiga’s cautionary tale because it sheds some light on how bad some of the poverty levels can be in parts of