COMPARISON BETWEEN "THE WHITE TIGER" AND THE MOVIE "SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE"
Presented by- Divya ChoudharySemester- 4
Paper no.- 13 paper name – The New literature
Batch Year- 2015-17 Enrolment No.- PG15101007
Email id- [email protected] Submitted to- Smt. S B Gardi
Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University
ABOUT AUTHOR• Aravind Adiga is an Indo-
Australian writer and journalist. • His debut novel, The White Tiger,
won the 2008 Man Booker Prize.• Aravind Adiga was born in Madras
on 23 October 1974.• Adiga grew up in Mangalore and
studied at Canara High School.• He is the fourth Indian-born
author to win the prize, after Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai.
• Full title: The White Tiger• Author: Aravind Adiga.• Type of work: Novel• Genre: Fiction novel, Epistolary novel, Dark
Comedy, Satire• LANGUAGE: Indian English• Date of first PUBLICATION: April 22, 2008• NARRATOR: Balram Halwai• Technique: Flashback• Climax: Balram kills his master Ashok and run
away to Bangalore.• Protagonist: Balram Halwai
• Setting (place): Various location in India including Laxmangarh, Delhi, Dhanbad, Bangalore.
• Point of view: The novel is from the perspective of Balram Halwai, who is the mouthpiece of Arvind Adiga himself.
• Themes: The Indian family, Lightness and Darkness, Marriage in India, Globalization, The cast system, India’s relationship to china, Freedom, Individualism, corruption, Class Conflict, Good v/s Evil, Old Morality V/S New Morality, Eurocentrism
• SYMBOLS: Rooster Coop, Chandelier, Cars, Delhi’s Road, Green Lizard, Black fort, black ogre in car etc.
• Motif: India of light and India of darkness
THE WHITE TIGER• The novel studies the contrast between India's
rise as a modern global economy and the lead character, Balram, who comes from crushing rural poverty.
• “At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the West, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of [Indian] society. That's what I'm trying to do – it is not an attack on the country, it's about the greater process of self-examination.”
• “See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?? Losing weight and looking like the poor.” - Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
• The entire novel is narrated through letters by Balram Halwai to the Premier of China, who will soon be visiting India.
Balram goes to Delhi, Accident by Pinky madam and Ashok’s murder by
BalramBalram leaves the
school, Balram finds work at Stork’s home
Balram leaves the school, Balram finds work at Stork’s home
Balram succeeds in escaping and becomes entrepreneur in Bangalore
Plot overview
• “The India of Light and the India of Darkness.”
• “Please understand, Your Excellency, that India is two countries in one: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness.”
• An entrepreneur who emerges from the ‘India of Darkness” and enters into the ‘India of Light’
• Two ‘Indias’ in one India.
LIGHTNESS AND DARKNESS• Duality of light and dark.
• Light then becomes a multifaceted symbol of time, wealth, location and obligation.
• While Darkness represent the past, poverty, rural India and most importantly loyality to family and master.
• Jamal Malik• Latika• Salim Malik• Prem Kapoor (Anil
Kapoor)• Police Inspector
• Balram Harwai• Wen Jiabo• Mr. Ashok• Pinky Madam• Kusum• Vikram Halwai• Kishan• Dharam
MAJOR CHARACTERS
The White Tiger Slumdog Millionaire
THE WHITE TIGER & SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
• The White Tiger is the story of Balram Halwai’s life as a self-declared “self-made entrepreneur”: a rickshaw driver’s son who skillfully climbs India’s social ladder to become a chauffer and later a successful businessman.
• The film is based on a teen who grew up in the slums in Mumbai. He becomes a contestant on the Indian version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?“.
• Balram recounts his life story in a letter to visiting Chinese official Premier Wen Jiabao, with the goal of educating the premier about entrepreneurship in India.
• He is prevented under notion of cheating as he knew all the answers and wasn’t educated. While being interrogated, events from his life history are shown which explain why he knows the answers.
• Balram writes from his luxurious office in the city of Bangalore, but the story begins in his rural ancestral village of Laxmangahr.
• In the beginning of the film, he is one question away from 20 million rupees, the biggest prize of the contest.
SIMILARITIES IN BOTH MOVIE AND NOVEL
• The starting point is that they’re both Indian works, based in India and about India.
• The other thing is both their storylines are about underdog characters from miserable backgrounds and childhoods rising in an unlikely manner to achieve success in life.
• The main thing is that both feature an India in which injustice, suffering and poverty are significant and abundant in society.
• The main plot focus between the two differs markedly in that with White Tiger, the portrayal of social problems is a main theme while Slumdog has a romantic element as its central part of its storyline with poverty and crime as significant but accompanying.
• They both are the victims of the poor societal system in India; Jamal being tortured and Balram being treated like a slave in the family he works for.
Continue…
• In The White Tiger Balram dreamt all his life of becoming something successful and making something of himself. Jamal, on the other hand, lived his life focusing on finding the love of his life – Latika. He applied to be on the show be cause he was hoping that Latika would be watching him in the show – not to win the money.
• One clear similarity is that the both main characters come from extreme poor conditions. Balram Halwai grows up in a poor family with a low caste in a small town in India and Jamal becomes homeless at a very young age and starts to live on the streets in the slum.
PROFESSION OF BOTH THE PROTAGONISTS
• Balram and his brother Kishan begin working in a teashop in nearby Dhanbad, Balram neglects his duties and spends his days listening to customers’ conversations.
• He works at a call center, serving tea to the telephone operators.
BALRAM HALWAI• Balram is an Indian man from an impoverished
background, born in the village of Laxmangarh.• Balram Halwai is a poor Indian villager whose
great ambition dead him to the highpoint of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore industrialist.
• One of the most important facts the school inspector named him “The White Tiger”, “The rarest animal in the jungle (P.30) because he is the cleverest child in Laxmangarh.”
KISHAN HALWAI• Kishan is Balram’s older brother who cares
for him after their father dies. Though Kishan is an influential, fatherly figure in Balram’s life.
• Kishan is Balram’s older brother who cares for him after their father dies. Though Kishan is an influential, fatherly figure in Balram’s life, Balram laments his brother’s lack of “entrepreneurial spirit”.
• Kusum allows Kishan to work him hard, take most of his wages, and arrange his marriage early in life, before he can support a family.
JAMAL MALIKUneducated – grew up in the slums of Mumbai where children are forced to work at an early age. Even if there are opportunities, children have to make a living instead of going to school.Ambitious - he takes risks that others would never take to achieve his goals. he dives into a hole full of excrement so that he could get out of the toilet in order to get an autograph of his famous singer. He introduces himself as a cook so that he can enter Javed’s house which is another big risk.
SALIM MALIK• Jamal’s older brother• He is hungry for money; - He sells Jamal’s autograph when they
are little kids. - He gets angry to lose his customer
because Jamal doesn’t get out of the toilet.
• He is hungry for power; - Killing Maman is easy for him and he
starts to work for Javed, another gang leader.
- He says “He says I do anything Javed asks”
- He points a gun at Jamal’s head and threatens him: “I am number 1 now... “ “The man with the colt 45 (a type of gun) says ‘Shut up’”
CONFLICT• Conflict is the struggle between opposing
forces. A story is not a real story without a conflict. There must be some kind of a
problem for the action to develop.
Conflict is one of the most important elements of stories as it causes the action. Without a conflict, the plot would not be
realistic.
•Greed, corruption and
the misuse of power
are highlighted in the
film and the novel
through a variety of
characters.
TO SUM UP…• Why does Balram wants to become a
master? And why does he killed his master?
• What do you think the film is saying about the globalization of culture through media? We see the game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” adapted in the Indian culture. Is this a sign of progress? Why or why not? What is this film saying about the effect of money on culture?
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