The White Tiger was a story which I figured would be a typical inspirational story about a poor guy clawing his way out of poverty by learning his ways from a young businessman turned out to be so dark and disturbing. At times, I even rooted for and empathized for the guy as he was someone who was born in a no-win situation and the fact that his masters seesawed between being kind and mean, despite blathering on and on about equality. The young masters were well-meaning but weak people especially Ashok–he was a sissy who deserved what he got. He threw Balram to the wolves and in the end when he still proves to be loyal was again ready to throw him in gutter.
Balram was no better. He thought so highly of himself calling himself a loyal servant and he did manage to somewhat come off like that in the movie but he was anything but that. The whole time I was feeling like I’m looking through the eyes of a rotten person, his thoughts were cancerous and in the end when he found out about his family he was all like ‘Huh I wonder what happened to them’ *smh*
Overall, the writer Aravind Adiga has woven a powerful tale about awful people doing awful things by following an awful system. The chicken coop metaphor is incredibly powerful and made me more conscious and notice the privileges people earn because of caste differences around me too.
