The Struggle to Overcome Kulin Gunathilake 12th Grade

In The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga adopts an epistolary form to depict the plight of a low caste servant, trying to escape the physical and mental chains that forge his destiny. Adiga initially presents a protagonist in Balram, who is engaging, despite confessing to horrific crimes. His language, thoughts, and deeds convey his initially good nature. However, this good nature is also a huge weakness in his journey to freedom as the India Adiga presents is sharply divided into two, the Darkness, and the Light. The Light is where the upper castes reside, filled with malfeasance and nepotism; a hotbed for corruption; whereas the Darkness is where the lower castes dwell, filled with poverty and an archaic sense of duty to family. Balram, being bogged in the Darkness, was forced to overcome his kind but weak nature to escape this Rooster Coop, freeing himself from slavery.

Born with the name “Munna”, and by the end of the novel known as “Ashok Sharma”, Balram goes through a steady transformation from a kind-hearted boy to the animal that “comes only once in a generation”, The White Tiger. He begins as a mere child and a peasant in The Darkness, completely unimportant and unloved, and expected to be completely submissive to the will of...