The White Tiger (2008) (edit title/settings)

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Characters/People edit see section history

• "White Tiger"/Balram/Munna/ Mr Ashok Sharma: protagonist, narrator, driver/servant, entrepreneur, murderer
• Mr. Ashok: Balram's master, landlord, coal industrialist's America-returned son
• Pinky Madam: Ashok's wife, American a non-hindu. She divorces Ashok.
• Kishan: Balram's elder brother
• Mr. Wen Jiabao: China's prime minister
• Dharam: Balram's nephew who joins him at Ashok's
• Kusum Granny: Balram's grandmother
• Mukesh Sir: Ashok's elder brother, landlord, coal industrialist. AKA Mongoose
• Vijay: pigherd's son, bus conductor, politician
• Ram Persad: Balram's competition in driving. Ram is the number one driver while Balram is the number two driver. Actually a muslim, impersonating as Hindu
• The Stork: Mukesh's and Ashok's Father. One of the four rich people in Laxmangarh, a coal industrialist.
• ram: A driver who Balram spends time with while waiting for his Master. He gives Balram the name Country-mouse. He also educates Balram about city life.
• sovereigns: Gold coins
• Ms. Nambudiripad: good book
• Balram Halwai: interestign character
• Mr. Premier: sometimes things shouldn't be written
• Vitiligo-Lips: irritating
• Mohammad Asif: Add a description of this character.
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Mr. Vikram Halwai
• Ram Bahadur
• Luttu Auntie
• Cousin Dilip

Quotes edit see section history

• “And then, thanks to all those politicians in Delhi, on the fifteenth of August, 1947 - the day the British left - the cages had been let open; and the animals had attacked and ripped each other apart and jungle law replaced zoo law. Those that were the most ferocious, the hungriest, had eaten everyone else up, and grown big bellies. That was all that counted now, the size of your belly. It didn’t matter whether you were a woman, or a Muslim, or an untouchable: anyone with a belly could rise up.”

  Balram

• “Electricity poles - defunct.Water tap - broken.Children - too lean and short for their age, and with oversized heads from which vivid eyes shine, like the guilty conscience of the government of India.”

  Balram

• “"What a fucking joke."”

  Balram, others

• “Part of me wanted to get up and apologize to him right there and say, You go and be a driver in Delhi. You never did anything to hurt me. Forgive me, brother.I turned to the other side, farted, and went back to sleep.”

  Balram

• “Iqbal, who is one of the four best poets in the world - the others being Rumi, Mirza Ghalib, and a fourth fellow, also a Muslim, whose name I’ve forgotten - has written a poem where he says this about slaves: They remain slaves because they can’t see what is beautiful in this world.Even as a boy I could see what was beautiful in the world: I was destined not to stay a slave.”

• “Standing around books, even books in a foreign language, you feel a kind of electricity buzzing up towards you. It just happens, the way you get erect around girls wearing tight jeans. Except what happens here is that your brain starts to hum.”

• “Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you’ll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks, sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half-hour before falling asleep - all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with.”

• “I am not an original thinker, but I am an original listener.”

• “I came to Dhanbad after my father’s death. He had been ill for some time, but there is no hospital in Laxmangarh, although there are three different foundation stones for a hospital, laid by three different politicians before three different elections.”

• “The dreams of the rich, and the dreams of the poor—they never overlap, do they?”

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• They remain slaves because they can’t see what is beautiful in this world.

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• Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love—or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?

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• Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many, Mr. Jiabao. A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent—as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way—to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man’s hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.

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• In any jungle, what is the rarest of animals— the creature that comes along only once in a generation?” I thought about it and said: “The white tiger.” “That’s what you are, in this jungle.”

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• Iqbal, that great poet, was so right. The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave.

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• The story of a poor man’s life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.

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• To sum up—in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat—or get eaten up.

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• Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That’s my whole philosophy in a sentence.

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• Like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters discuss the elections in Laxmangarh.

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• The Rooster Coop was doing its work. Servants have to keep other servants from becoming innovators, experimenters, or entrepreneurs. Yes, that’s the sad truth, Mr. Premier. The coop is guarded from the inside.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• India: New Delhi, Bangalore, Laxmangarh, Dhanbad, Mumbai, Calcutta

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Naxals: Militant Communist groups operating in different parts of India
• Paan: Paan is a mixture of areca nut, slaked lime and kaatha powder, rolled in a betel leaf, which is consumed by chewing it. It is said to be euphoria-inducing and addictive. It sometimes contains tobacco. There are many regional variations. It is claimed to be chewed for digestive purposes, but has several adverse health effects. Paan users often have red teeth due to the colourant ingredients.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Family: How does one climb the social ladder in India without leaving leaving their family behind?
• Caste, Social Class Structure: Is it possible for anyone to break free of the caste they were born into?

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Aravind Adiga (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Man Booker Prize (2008)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PR9619.4.A35 W47 2008
• Dewey: 823.92

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › Indian
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( A )