Maneck's Downfall

What moved me the most about A Fine Balance was the way the emergency and the condition of humanity in general (the existence of horrific caste violence, all the cruelty and hatred engendered by the class structure, human beings being treated like animals in forced sterilization) effects not only those living through these atrocities but every individual in this society as well. The people who are not suffering directly suffer indirectly if they have any sense of compassion, which it is my belief that most people do. The characters in the novel who experience the most tragedy in a way accept this as a part of life and keep pushing through the obstacles with a sense of hope that things could get better. After all they have seen first hand how ugly the world can be, but this seems to have inspired them to pay attention to the beauty of the small things that most people take for granted. This echos Roy of course. And again the question arrises are the small things all we can hope to take joy in? In the character of Maneck we find a young man with so much intelligence, compassion, and potential to make the world a better place through his kindness of soul. Yet, he has been sheltered from how ugly the world can be growing up in a beautiful, loving environment. When he arrives in the city, his downfall begins as he learns bit by bit just how cruel the world can be and that "everything ends badly." In the end, the reality of the conditions that exist and the suffering that people endur overwhelms Maneck. He can not find joy in the little things, because there are too many devestating big things that occur in this world.

Upward Mobility

This novel offers a very different perspective of poverty from the ones we have previously seen. Not only is it set in a different time period, but it provides many different illustrations of poverty and class. We are not limited to one type of lower class but see a multitude of people struggling to survive. The realism of this novel also differs from our previous works. Instead of seeing people climb to the top as in Q & A or White Tiger, we see people stuck because of the class they were born into. There is no upward mobility. This type of fantasy only happens in fiction according to this novel. This is an interesting contrast to the previous novels because to me it romanticizes poverty less. To see nothing but corruption and horror continually bringing these characters down is frustrating. Although we get moments of fresh air through family and laughter, the fact that upward mobility is impossible and everyone is stuck is constantly eminent.

The power of story

The novel depends on the power of story (or back story ) to elicit interest and emotional investment in the characters. This humanizing power of story is not only structurally assumed. This concept of story also plays a key role in the creation and movement of A Fine Balance’s narrative. For instance on page 334-5, Maneck sways Dina to real concern for the tailors by telling her about their former life. He finishes with an account of their family’s murder. She is horrified by the story and moved to compassion wishing for the tailors safe return out of concern for their safety rather than her prosperity. This sentiment results in her taking a more selfless interest upon their return because she understands their plight. Moreover, it cultivates the domestic happiness that follows. When this sense of community and domesticity is challenged by Om’s and Maneck’s fighting, Dina restores peace by telling her back story (p419).

However the power of story is not the only narrative engine. The outside force of the Emergency, or more specifically the domination it allows, move the narrative. These catastrophes are twined with the examples of stories uniting the characters. For instance the tailors story comes up because they have been disappeared to a forced labor camp which in turn threatens Dina’s livelihood. On one hand, this interplay of story as a response to catastrophe seems to explode caste and class distinctions. At best the back stories, inside jokes and little kindness of the novel are the small things that Roy celebrates.

However they also seems an attempt to cast a spell of domestic bliss that include lower class/caste into a sense of middle-classness. These stories make an exception for these individuals but doesn’t really question middleclass values. In fact at times they seem to stave off a consciousness or opposition of the Emergency as a social threat. These humanizing devices foster a denial and avoidance of the Emergency’s horrors at the most problematic.

Tightly Woven

There seems no sole perspective or simple read of the novel, no tidy uniting principle or moral to make it easily digestible excepting a kind of emotional realism. And, even confronting the ridiculous amount of suffering, the happenings are all plausible experiences slumdwellers and villagers have endured. Perhaps the sincerity of Mistry's attempts at describing how we try to find order in life, patterns, made this so. As with his quilt analogy, that suffering and joy are inextricably linked, also an experiential patchwork that does cohere into something meaningful. As this metaphor gives relief to readers and characters alike, it must also be lightly mocked reflecting the self-protective skepticism required to survive a world where you may construct your own meanings only to have them ripped apart. Or be unable to construct one which plunges Maneck into deeper despair and closer to suicide (his future becoming the past as rapidly as the scraps are sown together, all memory is sorrowful for him, 331). As Ishvar (293) believes he has discovered that life is not only suffering with a bit of "grain", that there are many roads and ways of walking, by the novel's end it seems Mistry has shown both to be true.
From the Miltonian rebel angel emerging from the sewer (suggesting the inevitable retribution for the inequity of all the poverty and greed), to the incredible spirit of Shankar's humility and gratitude-all the characters in between seem to be hanging in "a fine balance" between good and evil (and surviving it) but not in a pedantic way. Does Dina's attitude towards the tailors change out of guilt, fear of lost wages, or her growing compassion, or all three? When does she become forgivable? Does Beggarman not tell Shankar he is his brother only for monetary reasons or because it would destroy him to inevitably infer his own father crippled him for money?
I was sure Beggarmaster would torture Dina and the rest, exacting payment in gouged eyeballs for his protection (to suit his macabre drawings), yet he enjoyed their friendship, and did not harm them. Trying to reconcile his profession with his own bit of revealed humanity (or need for), is abruptly cut off by knowing he mutilated Monkey man's children. The balance here only appeared "fine" for a while, as this reality cannot be assuaged. Not everyone is explained comfortably away, and they inform upon the rest without guarantee. Would Nusswan still find extermination of slumdwellers acceptable if circumstance had forced him to learn, as Dina did, that they are hardworking people, enduring injustice daily? Mistry's idea of sailing under one flag requires this type of humanizing experience, which on a large scale he seems to be saying is impossible.

What a Downer

One thing that has become very evident in reading a fine balance is that Mistry is a downer. He introduces these episodes of happiness and by the end of the episode everything collapses.
The first example we see of this is when Dina finally finds happiness with Rustom, but that is short lived because Rustom gets killed while going out for ice cream. It was worsened by the fact that he ws going out for ice cream to finish a wonderful evening that epitomized the cheerfulness that this time in Dina's life had given her compared to the struggle of living with Nusswan.
We also discussed the episode of the taylors and how almost in a split second they had gone from successful taylors in their home town to having to travel to the city where everything is industrialized and work was underpaid. And who could forget the mountain episode where Manecks father goes mad and nature is being swallowed by roads and shanty towns.
I think the reason the author is presenting this roller-coaster of circumstances for these characters is to show that in this Emergency phase that happiness can never be truly attained. You can have a taste but the hand of the Emergency is going to come snatch you, eventually, and throw you into the horrible life you are trying to leave behind (It can also throw you into the front of a speeding train since it seems to happen so often in this novel). It shows the authors resentment of this phase in India's history to show the sentiment of most Indians toward the Emergency. The author serves the same purpose, I think, as his family of four that we have discussed are a micro chasm of the majority of Indians during this time. This has not been pleasant experience and unfortunately for the four main characters they cannot find pleasure in the small things like in The God Of Small Things because if the pattern in this novel holds true the small thing will probably die in a very tragic fashion. I can't wait to read the rest of the novel to see how Mistry can keep this going because I'm starting to enjoy looking for these events.

Here is the Democracy Now clip: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/22/arundhati_roy_on_obamas_wars_india

We are all animals?

The likability of Balram does not distract me from the problem of poverty but rather compels me to be more empathetic to the injustice inherent in a system that produces landowners and servants. Furthermore, seeing the choices that Balram is born into, to be a servant for the rest of his life and taking upon the humiliation the soul suffers, or physical labor that exhausts ones body and leads to an early death, all this to be able to survive for what? I am struck by the lack of freedom and the absence of the opportunity to enjoy life when one is stuck just working to live through humiliation and exhaustion. In The White Tiger the many comparisons of people to animals is significant not in that this war among men can be justified because we are all just "animals", but that men are driven to this primal state when surrounded by a society that allows some people to suffer through life and others to accumulate exorbitant amounts of wealth. The environment that Balram is surrounded with takes away the resistance of a soul that must face life or death and thus morals such as killing are compromised.

New article by Arundhati Roy

The following may be of interest to some of you. Arundhati Roy has a new piece in Outlook India about the Maoists (Naxalites) and Adivasis that fighting against the Indian state. The photography is also pretty amazing:

The antagonists in the forest are disparate and unequal in almost every way. On one side is a massive paramilitary force armed with the money, the firepower, the media, and the hubris of an emerging Superpower. On the other, ordinary villagers armed with traditional weapons, backed by a superbly organised, hugely motivated Maoist guerrilla fighting force with an extraordinary and violent history of armed rebellion. The Maoists and the paramilitary are old adversaries and have fought older avatars of each other several times before: Telangana in the ’50s; West Bengal, Bihar, Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh in the late ’60s and ’70s; and then again in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra from the ’80s all the way through to the present. They are familiar with each other’s tactics, and have studied each other’s combat manuals closely. Each time, it seemed as though the Maoists (or their previous avatars) had been not just defeated, but literally, physically exterminated. Each time, they have re-emerged, more organised, more determined and more influential than ever. Today once again the insurrection has spread through the mineral-rich forests of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal—homeland to millions of India’s tribal people, dreamland to the corporate world.

Poverty tourism

Interesting story in the Christian Science Monitor about poverty tourism:

Airplanes landing at the international airport at Mumbai(Bombay) barely miss the corrugated shantytown rooftops crowding the end of the runway. For many visitors, this is their closest encounter with the reality facing more than half of Mumbai’s 18 million citizens. But since the success of “Slumdog Millionaire,” slum tourism is on the rise here.

Close Reading

I have to ask the question: how much am I being manipulated by the author? As English students, we exercise a more critical eye and analyze the text deeper than much of the novel's audience. That being said, I generally find that that particular light shines during class discussion, and I am completely at the author's whim on the first read through. In Adiga's case, the speed of the narrative, the mannerisms and humor of the narrator kept me on my toes enough that I took much of what he said at face value. The portrayals of landlords and family, Balram's entrepreneurship and the aesthetics of his India, appropriately I found it difficult to parse out the character that is actually there from the one Adiga wants me to see. Recognizing the author’s techniques in portraying Balram along with his themes and digressions is like a man seeing beauty in the world for the first time. It is akin to the realization of the ‘Rooster Coop’ in that there is much deeper technique at play than the pace of the narrative and likeability of the character. It’s taken awhile to regain the close reading skills one loses when out of practice for so long, but the analysis on this blog and in class brings those skills once more to the surface and it has been valuable with respect to the pace we will be picking up over the remaining texts.

Contrary View

In discussion on Wednesday, it was mainly agreed that Balram creating a “school of White Tigers” is classified as “Balram creating a school of corrupt people who would one day end up the same way as him and eventually kill their master (which will be Balram) in an attempt to succeed and make it out of poverty”. I thought about Balram’s school of White Tigers and considered from a contrasting and optimistic approach (since it is simple to be optimistic and in favor for the main character). If Balram creates a school for the underprivileged kids, I think the school would be enrolled with White Tigers because the founder/father of the school is a White Tiger. In other words, Balram would be “the father” to the children who attend the school; Balram is the provider and source of this opportunity. “White Tiger” would arise from the “children taking after father” trait. Another reason why the children could take on the title of “White Tiger” is because they will receive an education and benefit from Balram’s “White Tiger” instance. After all, if Balram had not killed Ashock and taken the bag of rupees, the school would not exist. The “White Tiger” is what allows for the opportunity to create the school. In addition, these children who attend the school will receive an education which is a necessary step for their future out of poverty in a calm and peaceful way (Balram’s giving back to the people for his unpleasant incident).

Balram's Likability

From the beginning of the novel, Balram's character seems honest and intriguing. He is not afraid to admit that he has murdered a man. At the same time, there is a sense that there is more to the story than his being a criminal. He laughs at the wanted poster claiming that the man described and pictured could be one of many. He is witty and cynical which makes his character appealing. It is easy to believe that he is too smart to have committed murder without a viable reason. As we go through the story, we feel sorrow and pity for Balram. We see that even Ashok, the kind master, is both ignorant and corrupt. He treats Balram as nothing better than an animal. He pokes fun at Balram's lack of education. Although he claims to be proving the issues with society, he is clearly one of the problems. He has the power to help someone from the lower castes but openly chooses not to. After watching Ashok become more and more corrupt, it is easier to excuse Balram for his murder. Balram's entrepreneurship is less questionable and seems more legitimate after hearing the struggles he endured. The outcome seems fair because Balram has been so abused previously.

Cruelty with Cruelty

Balram has survived the jungle of poverty, admitting, “Once I was a driver to a master, now I am a master of drivers” (Adiga 259). He elates about his future prospects and the differences between his and Ashok’s character. Balram will not “slap, or bully, or mock [his employees]” and suggests that his example will provide the tools for their salvation; “If they notice the way I talk, the way I dress, the way I keep things clean, they’ll go up in life. If they don’t, they’ll be [slaves] all their lives” (259). The chiastic structure of Balram’s thought process is circular enough to keep his consciousness and morality from developing into guilt. Balram is haunted by the idea of not killing Ashok: “a real nightmare [is] that you lost your nerve and let Mr. Ashok get away—that you’re still in Delhi, still the servant of another man…” (269). Adiga tests the reader’s sense of Justice by reveling in a righteousness that fights cruelty with cruelty. It is a struggle of power between men, as it has historically always been. And the reader is forced to swallow that what may be just for one man may be unjust for mankind. Balram, the survivor, is the White Tiger, the exception worthy enough for life—others aren’t, if they were, they too would have succeeded and survived. But Balram, free of Ashok, is now a servant to his nephew, whom he bribes with milk, ice cream, and education. No romance, no retribution. And if Balram doesn’t believe he’s blighted by murder, he isn’t.

Where there is poverty, there isn’t justice. Or freedom.

PROMPT

For this week, I'd like you to consider the effect that anti-humanism has on your sense of poverty (and perhaps of the injustice that poverty creates) in Adiga's novel. Is it the case that the likability of the main character has a consequence on your overall sense of the problems produced by poverty? Are the environmental politics of the novel consistent with your sense of justice (or, if we're all animals, does it make sense to talk about justice)? Similarly, if Balram and Ashok are more or less the same, then what is poverty -- a mode of perception, aesthetics, inactivity?

Road Kill

“From the way the wheels crunched it completely, and from how there was no noise when she stopped the car , not even a whimpering or a barking, I knew what had happened to the thing we had hit” (Adiga 138). This excerpt exemplifies the monotonous truth that struggles but soldiers through Adiga’s ‘The White Tiger’: the progress of a developing nation sacrifices the sensitivities of a Western world made comfortable by its superior quality of life. From the armchair of a six story air-conditioned library the passive insensitivity towards human life exhibited in ‘White Tiger’ elevates our own esteemed understanding of morality and even justice. The clever, enigmatic narrator—satirical and blasphemous in a way that plays into our ideas of intellectual worthiness—kills his ‘master’. But because we value wit, thoughtfulness, and criticism (and perhaps because we retrace our own less than perfect records) we must wonder if the notions of piety, justice, and goodness are irreparably damaged by a character born into the troubled India we have surveyed this semester and understand to be blighted by poverty and desperation.

In America, we run over cats and dogs, mostly by accident. In India, wandering children, described as black things, are reduced analogously to stray pets, that may or may not be worthy of preservation. “Will anyone miss her? … No, probably not” (Adiga 140). It wasn’t a white tiger, so it wasn’t worth saving.

Philo--Kill Your Employer to be Free

Balram says about Ashok’s murder:

“I’m losing him, I thought, and this forced me to do something I knew I would hate myself for, even years later. I really didn’t want to do this—I really didn’t want to think, even in the two or three minutes he had left to live, that I was that kind of driver—the one that resorts to blackmailing his master—but he left me no options.” (pg. 243)

In this passage, Balram explains his ‘rationale’ for killing Ashok. Looking at this climactic excerpt, we clearly see that Adiga weaves some fundamental philosophic issues into his novel— free will, responsibility, morality, etc. For brevity’s sake, I will, of course, ignore the issue of Balram’s second person narration. Credibility and narrative indirection are not my current concerns.

Consider this passage from a linguistic/grammatical perspective. “I’m losing him, I thought, and this forced me to do something…” Balram’s thought about Ashok’s escape (from death) ‘forces him to do something…’ Let’s play with agency and rewrite that sentence. Balram is forced (by the thought of Ashok’s escape) to do something. With Balram as the subject, the sentence is passive. Passivity becomes a pattern in relation to his character. For a lack of a better phrase, things ‘are done’ to Balram. He says, “I really didn’t want to do this... but he left me no option.” The notion of passivity translates to philosophy. Balram’s explains his motivation by NOT having any motivational explanation. Apparently his only option is to blackmail and kill his master. Balram makes no ‘choice.’ He is a passive observer of the universe—just a thing among other things—being acted upon, but himself not acting. Before he stabs his master with the glass bottle, Balram says, "There is a problem, sir. You should have got a replacement a long time ago."--not the best 'hasta la vista, baby.'

Inherent to the general notion of free will is one’s ability ‘to choose.’ Presently, I am writing this blog. Concerning my future, I can either choose to (A) keep writing, or (B) stop writing. My ability to choose either A or B makes me free with regard to writing this blog. (I’ll choose “A,” of course, because I want to pass, but it is still my option to do “B.”) Analogously, Balram can either kill his master, or, not kill his master. But he protests about ‘wanting to do otherwise’ and having no other option. Balram says, in so many words, that he does not have free will. And without free will—without the ability to choose—a man has no control over his life. He has no options. He is a ‘thing,’ not a person.

Adiga knows this. These concepts are basic. The way he uses them is, however, technical and more complex. By denying his free will, Balram avoids responsibility. For how can he be responsible for doing something without volition? With no other options, he was forced (passive construction) to blackmail and murder his master. Doing otherwise, he claims, is beyond his power. And therefore we, as readers, as people with some sense of ethics or morality, have no way of holding Balram responsible for this offense. Without his free will, he was forced like a slave. And here is the great irony. Right after Ashok dies, Balram says, “I was a free man.” He denies his individual free will, thereby becoming a slave, in order to feel an inauthentic, even illusory perhaps, social sense of freedom. Balram defends himself against the adverse moral judgment for the murder of his master while, at the same time, makes sure to take credit for any moral commendation. Not to mention the red bag of cash. The situation is ironically absurd. He becomes a slave to free himself. He leaves the Darkness as a good person and comes to the Light as a murderer. You, you American bloggers, you want the moral of Balram’s story? Here it is: Money over Morality.

Please excuse my sloppiness. It’s getting late now—12:37 a.m.—and I am no poet or philosopher. I do, however, have four favorite philosophers. They’re all German, and are known as the greatest in history. They are Heidegger, Nietzsche, Liebnitz, and I forget the last. Hitler? Does that sound right? You can laugh now—it’s a fucking joke.

India needs to know?

In terms of audience, I’d like to know who Adiga is speaking to in his letters. There is a great deal of effort in devising a dialogue that identifies the disruption of the caste system in India since British colonization and civil wars. For instance, Adiga’s description of the orderly zoo prior to British colonization and the cage doors being left open after the British withdrawal and civil war describes the beginnings of caste disruption and corruption of the few over the many. Additionally, the novel states that 99.9% of the country is the poverty-stricken, “half-baked” class (stuck in the rooster coop) and the remaining 0.01% are the corrupt landlords and politicians running the country, collecting wealth, and burdening the poor with all the debt. Balram, the entrepreneur/assassin/white tiger (“one born per generation”) is the exception; or the example of how the lower classes can improve conditions and defeat prejudices? Maybe not so much the example of success, but the example of the types of oppressive barriers still in place in a country that has evolved into a global economic power. I’m not going so far as to suggest that Adiga tries to incite the lower-class to civil war. But Balram’s “education” continues throughout the text. His ability to “see” and the actions of the poor and the rich results in these connections that allow him to understand the ingrained servitude that supports the condescension of the rich.

Family ties

The importance of the family and loyalty to the family in Indian can not be stressed enough as an individuals test of morality. But as Adiga depicts the family, they are actually a catalyst to immorality. In Balram's case it is the women in the family, especially the grandmother, that I found to be particularly disabling Balram, his father, and brother. The hope may have been gone for Balram's father to achieve a better life but Balram was the smartest boy in school and could have been offered a scholarship somewhere if he had been allowed to stay. Yet, he gets pulled out of school because the women thought one of his cousins "needed" to get married and so they had to take out a huge loan form the stork. I do not know if such lavish weddings are required for anyone to get married in a small village, but this seems ridiculous and selfish to me. It seems that the women in the family payed no attention to Balram's ability and his potential to become educated and perhaps move out of a life of poverty and expected him to exist in servitude and relinquish all of his earnings to them. Perhaps if Balram's family gave him the chance to escape poverty through honorable means he would have. Perhaps if they had given him love and support he would have not let them go in the end.

Is it tradition?

Adiga does a great job of showing Balram's transition from servant to entrepreneur by showing the precise moments when his world perspective starts to change. The irony of it all is that the people that let him to change his perspective are his masters.
Mr. Ashok is the one that makes Balram aware that his room is falling apart and not fit for most people. Balram was blind to this fact before this incident just like he was blind to his appearance before Pinky Madam made him aware of how horrible he looked. They helped Balram take the first steps out of servitude. He was even successful in changing his appearance and making it into the mall where drivers were not allowed. Although he was still cognitively aware that he was not supposed to be in there. The mental process takes longer than the physical process. The most interesting part about this is that he blames his father for not raising him to see these things that have kept him a servant. He now knows that it was not impossible to transcend these social labels, but if families kept raising their children to not know otherwise then how were they to overcome their caste. It wasn't the people holding themselves down, it was tradition and it took Balram a trip to Delhi, where the caste lines are blurred, to see past them. I guess if they are not as clearly visible as in the villages it is easier to cross them because there are no referees to call you out of bounds. (not many sports references so far so i thought i might add one)

Form

The epistolary form of Adiga's White Tiger is significant in the way we have to interpret Balram's arguments. I've slipped up several times and thought his prose was directed at me and even forgot he was ostensibly writing in letters. While yes, this is true to the extent that a novel is directed at its audience/reader, Balram is speaking to the Premier of China, initially somewhat formally and easing into a familiarity fairly quickly. I press on this because of his intentions to describe entrepreneurship in India by discussing the forming of one of its own, namely himself. What a fucking joke. Leagues are described about the character in the way he speaks Man to Man towards the Premier. In breaking out of the metaphorical chicken coop he has won the ability to address those classically above his station on an even level as well as to share inside (and of course more truthful) information about his country that the Premier will certainly not find with the smiling, upwardly mobile India, the tourist face, the governmental face that he will encounter. Now we have no way of knowing, and we assume to the contrary, whether these correspondence were sent in the world of the fiction. I'd imagine not personally as they are fairly incriminating. It is significant only in that they were written and in the form of their writing. Balram claimed his manhood and passed into a higher lifestyle at the expense of his former life and relations. That is the price of the coop. A man who has escaped however can now speak levelly with Premiers and world-movers.

Servants Vs. Servants

To me one of the most interesting aspects of Adiga's The White Tiger is the relationships between servants. Although we know life is a power struggle, to see each caste with its own competition is very important in Adiga's novel. It helps emphasize the fact that everyone is a servant to someone. Even Ashok is a servant to his father as well as the government that he continually has to pay off. The key is to be the "rich" servant. We see this even among servants in the same business, such as with the drivers. Balram is constantly trying to be seen as better than Vitiligo Lips and the others. This is partly why he dons the look of a rich man and goes through the doors of the mall. Everyone is trying to prove that they are not on the very bottom. This is also illustrated through the envy of the uniform. To most of us, it seems odd to want to wear a uniform everyday. This is not the case in this novel, though. The minute Balram recieves his uniform, the respect he receives in his village skyrockets. In a world that focuses on upward mobility, even the smallest step up is significant.

Different Perspective of Poverty

In discussion, it was pointed out that Balram did not realize his actions (those that are considered wrong or nasty) until they were pointed out to him by Mr. Ashok and Pinkey. Examples of things pointed out to him were his scratching and not taking care of his teeth. I think this is an exceptionally remarkable point and it led me to think of other circumstances that are pointed out to him throughout the book. Even though most of the drivers (just like Balram) are “slaves to their masters”, they even bring things to his attention. They critique him for “wearing his uniform”. To see this from drivers who are similar to him and are ranked the same as him really confirms how diverse the life that Balram came from compared to where he is now. This uniform was in fact a big deal to him at the start of the job (and of course before) and continues to be a major deal to his relatives and associates where he comes from. In my opinion, the spotlight Adiga places on these tiny (in our eyes) lessons portrays poverty in a dissimilar way than the other novels. It allows a larger portrayal of some perspectives that underlie the circumstances in the life of poverty.

the spiritual transcendent versus the skeptical realist in the novels of Roy and Adiga

The Aesthetics of “White Tiger” strike me as pretty unique compared to the other novels so far. Adiga rarely, if ever, seems to break into the poetic mode to reveal knowledge of some expansive truth like Roy. Two passages really drive this home for me; Roy’s history house/Earth Woman passage(50-54) and Amiga’s Great Indian Rooster Coop (147-150). Roy moves through time discussing the past and later a place outside of time survey all of existence. More importantly she explores innerworlds and inner-meanings from Anglophilia to the insignificance of humanity (as it Humbles along). She rights with a sense of innocence and the spiritual. Even the way she plays with language and allusions is expansive and abstract. It lends a disembodied quality, authority beyond the speaker/narrator and seems to offer a look into deeper truth. In stark contrast Adiga’s mode is the skeptical realist. The Roster Coop isn’t a symbol, it is a metaphor. Furthermore is mechanical and structural even man-made opposed to Roy’s Earth Woman. Roy’s history house has no single meaning but rather a serious of interwoven, even contradictory themes. For Instance the forces of colonialism and their decay, a neoliberal sort of regional flavor, the refuge of little worlds apart from dominant society, physical dominance as history’s henchmen are a few themes couched in the history house. In contrast the Roster Coop is directly allegorical. It takes place in the contemporary world in the specific sphere of the (global?) marketplace. It takes a number of forces and boils them down to an image that simplifies (perhaps tries to demystify) the hugeness of peoples’ complacency in the face of economic oppression.

Morality? Define Morality...

First and foremost, I find The White Tiger to be a refreshingly humorous novel. I have only made it through the first 100 pages at this juncture, but I have been waiting for a character to match the immorality that is found in the ridiculously stratified societies that we continue to be presented with in this course. Balram's sardonic nature makes him an unpredictable character in a literary realm where the only characteristic that matters is the size of your belly. Another reason this book is so appetizing might be the fact that we have just finished a novel that evokes an overwhelmingly futile outlook on the possibility of altering the inequities of our world. Adiga deviates from this viewpoint just a bit. With Balram, Adiga seems to be saying, "Sure, there are ways to make a splash when your swimming up from the bottom with feet kicking you in the mouth...you just have to slit some tendons." I don't mean to sound disturbed, I just find this approach to the question of agency in poverty to be more effective than most attempts found in literature. Maybe I am a sucker for shocking, unpredictable, and just a bit on the wild-side characters, or possibly my fascination with this book is due to the timing of our reading it. The only problem I see with Adiga's approach at this point is the chance that many readers won't be able to identify with a character whose upward mobility is grounded in criminal behavior. Is anyone feeling that way?

A Camera's Journey

My last thoughts about Roy's novel is that it was really interesting to see that it ended with the cause of all the troubles in the novel and not with the Rahel-Esta scene. I think that by ending with the Ammu love scene it gives the novel a completely different feel, I mean if I look back at the novel from that point it is not as gruesome as it was as I was reading it. If it would have ended with the Rahel-Esta scene then the whole novel takes on a different meaning, for me, than if it ends with a beautiful moment.
The final scene with Ammu really focused on the point that we had talked about in class which was Roy's attention to the smaller parts of the whole. The novel began with a, to put it in movie terms, wide shot like from a helicopter or some place far off. We were introduced to these characters, to Sophie Mol's death, but it was not until later that the camera closes in on the individual events that shaped that introduction. The final scene was a close-up of this forbidden couple that knew the consequences of their actions, but still did it anyway. It made it seem like the whole book was an attempt to focus in on the small part, as if the camera was in a constant zoom. It zoomed pretty close sometimes, like when they talk about what happened to Esta, the moment when Ammu blames her children for her misfortune, and the passage that described Baby Kotchamma's diary. Those were pretty close shots, but when you try to zoom in too fast the picture becomes blurry and out of focus and it takes all the way until Ammu's love scene to gain back its focus and put the camera's journey in perspective.
Its weird that since Q&A all I can think of are movie metaphors.

Stymied Progress

There are many tragedies in Roy's book and not least among them is the separation of the twins and the effects they feel from the breaking of the love laws. Injustice is often cured over generations as the children learn from the parents and hopefully set their minds to do the right thing with their future, and the future's children. In evidence are the waning of the backwards walking days of the Untouchables. Society had come at least that far and will as likely progress. The twins however are marred by history and its clinging to its old ways. Their tragedy lies in separation and inability to overcome, socially, the love laws that ruined Ammu and Velutha. Had their love remained secret or nonexistent, the twins would have grown harboring their love for Velutha regardless of caste. They would have taught this to their children and slowly the love laws are rewritten over generations. With their separation and his death, they are turned inward and leave no effect on the greater social history, but rather consummate themselves and become whole again. They can overcome the love laws for themselves, but as far as we know (and can surmise) it is likely that their love will not positively affect the world around them. They may have healed a part of themselves by coming together, but the larger societal change they could have been a part of was stymied through the events of Roy's narrative. it's a novel about small things, but it is the nature of small things to gradually move mountains.

Adiga's White Tiger

Here's a picture of the fort in Laxmangarh:

Futile? I hope not.

Roy's technique creates a dilemma in my eyes. On the one hand, her writing style allows for disheartening tragedies to be recounted without completely drowning the reader in despair. However, focusing on the minute details of a travesty through poetic aestheticism causes the real societal problems to fade into the background as the "small things" encapsulate the reader in a realm of often overlooked sensibility. I loved this novel. I feel it is important to stress this fact. Roy is obviously a young master of a style that she has freshly carved from longstanding formulas, but the effect of her writing seems to disrupt the underlying intent of her novel. Is the novel much more pleasurable to read than most fictional critiques of class and caste systems? Yes. But is Roy so successful in beautifying the abysmal reality of her novel that the caste system no longer appears problematic? Possibly. The novel's ending illustrates this predicament created by her literary strategy. The sex scene between Ammu and Velutha is wonderfully stimulating in its intricate sensualization of a scene that we know, as readers, results in the decay of an entire network of individuals. Roy's novel continues to suggest that the obstacles set in place by the caste system, among many other marginalizing structures, are so great that one must focus on the infinitesimal wonders of life lest they be smashed by the overbearing inequities of the world around them. I realize that this is only a novel, and in order to truly appreciate its value you can't expect it to have palpable, real-world applications at every turn. However, as a social activist who obviously understands the power of allegory, Roy employs a style that dances dangerously along the line of depicting social change as an exercise in futility.