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Through "The White Tiger," Aravind Adiga illustrates the struggles faced in today's indian society with a scintillating story. The story revolves around Balram Halwai, a bright boy from a remote village, who depicts the bigger picture of poverty, apathy and inequalities ingrained in the nation. Fearlessly and frankly, Adiga puts together a story that has definitely appealed to many readers, hence gaining widespread popularity as a contemporary classic and winning the well sought after Man Booker Prize. The depiction of rural India and its ugliness in the novel is unapologetic, which is one of the aspects that makes this novel stand out. There are many instances in Balram's childhood where there are sufferings from poverty, helplessness from the illiteracy, and the constant tension due to the presence of the caste system. We see here that Adiga does not sugar coat the truth there, the everyday life of the lower class is filled with crime, dishonesty and exploitation. This kind of straightforwardness has resulted in both the good and the bad, with some readers arguing that they found the image that the novel presents of India to be overwhelmingly negative and dreary in nature. Nonetheless, it is this type of brutal honesty that has ever made "The White Tiger" such an exquisite masterpiece of contemporary literature.

Through “The White Tiger,” Aravind Adiga illustrates the struggles faced in today’s indian society with a scintillating story. The story revolves around Balram Halwai, a bright boy from a remote village, who depicts the bigger picture of poverty, apathy and inequalities ingrained in the nation. Fearlessly and frankly, Adiga puts together a story that has definitely appealed to many readers, hence gaining widespread popularity as a contemporary classic and winning the well sought after Man Booker Prize. The depiction of rural India and its ugliness in the novel is unapologetic, which is one of the aspects that makes this novel stand out. There are many instances in Balram’s childhood where there are sufferings from poverty, helplessness from the illiteracy, and the constant tension due to the presence of the caste system. We see here that Adiga does not sugar coat the truth there, the everyday life of the lower class is filled with crime, dishonesty and exploitation. This kind of straightforwardness has resulted in both the good and the bad, with some readers arguing that they found the image that the novel presents of India to be overwhelmingly negative and dreary in nature. Nonetheless, it is this type of brutal honesty that has ever made "The White Tiger" such an exquisite masterpiece of contemporary literature. Adiga, by exposing the ill side of Indian culture, compels the readers to discomfortable realities about social segregation and the level of capitalism in the country. The novel pushes back against the stereotype of India as a spiritual refuge of deep wisdom and antiquity with hard, clear facts about the colonially enslaved and now rapidly modernizing nation-state rife with age-old hierarchies. The narrator of the novel, Balram Halwai, is not only very witty but also ethically questionable. He is both a resourceful person who has been wronged and is one out to seek justice. He rises up from the struggles of an impoverished rural background to becoming a successful businessman through weird acts of cruelty, deceit and eventually murder. Nonetheless, Adiga gives Balram an amount of sympathy, as he resorts to unthinkable actions in order to escape his poverty and work towards a better life. Class, power, morality is something that comes hand in hand with the plot of the novel and created another layer of success. Adiga effortlessly combines satire, dark humour and social critique into one coherent narrative. A common theme is the perpetual juxtaposition of rural India’s “darkness” with the ‘Light’ of its urban counterparts. On one hand, some noteworthy punch brought forward by the reviews of this book include its realistic depiction along with strong standing on social issues which the country faces. Disapproval of the book revolves around it’s portrayal of hope for the Indian nation and its overall grim outlook. Other critics it depicts a negative image of India and overlooks the development the country has scored. Anyway, one can’t say that “the white tiger” is a false documentary representation – exactly what should be taken with sarcasm. These aspects do not propose an exhaustive representation of India but focus on those aspects Adiga feels are most sketchy. The author's intention in presenting the dismal picture of poor India in the novel is by no means intended to be a stereotype which millions Indians have to go through, but to the special conditions of a specific section of the society. To sum up, Aravind Adiga's novel The White Tiger is definitely thought provoking and can be classified as a politically and socially significant novel that criticises India of the present time. Adiga's skill in narrating events, brutal truth and tackling difficult subjects made it a modern classic. The novel's negativity about India and cynicism as a whole has earned it criticism, but nonetheless this book aids the reader in understanding more about India's social and economic conditions than most books.