Abstract
This paper explores the theme of control through visibility in Aravind Adiga’s “The White Tiger.” The analysis examines how the novel’s characters manipulate their visibility to exert control over their social environments. The paper utilizes a systematic review of past literature to illustrate how the characters in the novel construct their visibility and how visibility shapes their identity and power dynamics in the social environment, contributing to control. Reviews demonstrate that the “White Tiger,” the main character, Balram Halwai, obtains the power to control the social circumstances dictating his life and destiny by reshaping his identity to an empowering visibility. The characters in the novel strive to climb the social ladder and challenge societal expectations, yet ultimately find themselves constrained by the very systems they seek to transcend. To expound on the theme, the essay offers a comparative analysis which contrasts The White Tiger” geographical and historical context to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby“. Through the comparative analysis, this paper sheds light on the authors’ portrayal of socioeconomic struggles and the power dynamics inherent in visibility, highlighting the complexities of social mobility and control in diverse cultural contexts.
Control through Visibility in The Great Gatsby and the White Tiger Novels
Outward perspective plays a significant role in how an individual is viewed and treated by the world around them. How one presents themselves determines how they are judged and the kind of power and dominance they radiate. Broadly, the theme of control through visibility highlights how individuals can manipulate and control by building on a unique identity in society and their social interactions. In his text, “Visibility: A Category for Social Sciences“, Andrea Mubi Brighenti discusses visibility as a fundamental social science category used in understanding the contemporary aspects of society. The author describes visibility as a social phenomenon with extensive implications for power dynamics, social control, and identity formation(ref). He emphasizes that what is visible and invisible in a society is socially constructed and deeply embedded in cultural norms and power structures. Brighenti effectively demonstrates the relationship between visibility and social control by highlighting how visibility intersects with mechanisms of social control, such as policing, regulation, and disciplinary practices. His analysis sheds light on the complex ways visibility operates as a power and control mechanism, leading to implications of social inequality and stratification. Therefore, this paper will rely on Brighenti’s description of visibility and its relation to social control to discuss the theme of control through visibility in Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger”.
Research Question:
How do characters in Aravind Adiga’s novel “The White Tiger” use visibility to exert control in their social environment and attain social mobility?
Generally, The White Tiger offers a dark, humorous perspective of Indian stratified society through the perspective of a village boy, Balram Halwai. Using the protagonist as the narrator, the novel offers an empathetic perspective of Balram’s life, which offers the readers a deeper connection with the characters and an understanding of the narrative. The novel examines religion, stratification, corruption, and poverty in India and how they motivate people to behave in a particular manner that is sometimes unthinkable. Collectively, the novel lays out the power of visibility and how it influences central characters to control how they are socially perceived, allowing them to climb up the social status ladder or become the versions of themselves that they desire.
In “The White Tiger,” the power of visibility plays a significant role in shaping characters’ lives and societal structures and identities. The most notable aspect of control through visibility is exemplified by Adiga’s protagonist, Balram Halwai, who continuously restructures his image to navigate through India’s stratified society. The novel shows that in India, recognition is determined by an individual’s social class and position, as a person’s fate is tied to the caste and possibly the village they come from (Dewi et al., 3). Balram’s visibility effort can be understood as an attempt to be recognized differently. Brighenti argues that “distortions in visibility lead to distortions in social representations, distortions through visibility” (Brighenti, 330). Brighenti’s statement affirms that visibility is correlated to recognition, which in most occasions is tied to the power to control. Therefore, Balram’s efforts to escape his fate are supported by his determination to manipulate how those in positions of power perceive him with the hope that they may perceive him as more than his social background and help him attain social mobility. The manipulation of his visibility is seen early in the novel when he impresses the school inspector, who ends his inspection activities by promising him a scholarship and a change of school to a more promising environment with a new title of “The white tiger”. When he miraculously secured a driver job opportunity, he adopts various personas and schemes to gain recognition and control over his destiny, ultimately breaking free from societal constraints. For instance, he reports that when his employer, Mr. Stork, first asked him which caste he belonged in, he took the time to internalize his thoughts because he knew his future was dependent on the answer he gave, and he had to think of a way to explain a thing or two about castes (Adiga, 39). This is an example of many instances where Balram committed to acting in a certain way to impress his employers, gain positive visibility, and control his fate to be more than a rick saw puller and a man from the sweet maker’s clan, the Halwai.
Balram’s effort to change his visibility to control the employer’s perception and change his life goes as far as accepting a murder charge on behalf of Ashok’s wife’s mistakes. After Madam Pinky insists on driving after arguing that “everyone in India drinks and drives” (Adiga, 135) where, she ends up hitting what seems to be a small child, and instead of stopping to check up on the child or confirm what had happened, the three decide to keep driving. Normally or based on societal morals and legal obligations, Balram would have been expected to report the case to the police or even try to confide in someone about what had happened. Instead, he dedicates his time to washing “every bit of blood and flesh” of the vehicle (139) throughout the night. This is the extent to which the character went through just to ensure that he controls his employers’ perception of him, and he gets to change his life by maintaining his driver job. According to Huebert (33), Balram’s primary motivation to reconstruct a different image of himself is solely his desire to climb the social ladder and experience a different life than that he had grown up knowing in Laxmangarh.
The final consequences of Balram’s visibility demonstrate the disempowering impacts of visibility as demonstrated in Brighenti’s discussion of visibility. Brighenti asserts that “Visibility is a double-edged sword: it can be empowering as well as disempowering” (Brighenti, 335). Through this statement, Brighenti demonstrates that visibility can come at the expense of losing control, power or freedom. For instance, when one makes a career such as politics through visibility, they may need to forego their freedom as their privacy is lost in the effort to maintain a specific image. Similarly, even though Balram’s controlled visibility and constructed identity may have earned him the social status he so desperately needed, it came at the expense of losing his entire family and having to hide from the police. The consequences here affirm Brighenti’s claims that visibility can be disempowering and not directly related to any form of moral values (Brighenti, 340). For his new visibility as a businessman in a respectful social class, Balram has to face the guilt of his immoral acts of murder and the guilt of being the cause of his family’s death. Therefore, the visibility did not entirely transform his life without consequences; it offered the benefits of control at the expense of something even bigger: family and freedom.
The disempowering aspect of visibility is also notable through the “White Tiger” character Pinky, Ashok’s wife. Pinky Madam represents the complex nature of control through visibility by demonstrating the interplay between social class, power, and social expectations. Her character demonstrates the struggle that an individual can encounter while trying to control their lives amid societal pressures and expectations. Pinky is an Indian American woman living in New York before she accompanies Ashok to India for what she thought was a short period. She has a negative attitude towards Indians and is constantly displayed as being unhappy with Ashok’s decision to extend their stay. In the context of control through visibility, even though Pinky appears to be in a position of relative privilege and control, as she belongs to a wealthy family and has the means to live a comfortable life, she lacks control over her life and the freedom to live as she desires. Her marriage to Ashok, an upper-class member, brings her face-to-face with the harsh realities of their social environment, where she has to adhere to the norms of being an Indian woman and follow through the norms. Despite her financial privilege, Pinky finds herself constrained by the oppressive social norms and expectations that dictate her behaviour and choices. The constraint is demonstrated when Pinky has to dress in a certain before Ashok’s family members. The narrator provides an example by pointing out that “The moment the Mongoose left, I swear, the skirts became even shorter. When she sat in the back, I could see half her boobs hanging out of her clothes each time I had to look in the rearview mirror” (Adiga, 82). This demonstrates that even though Ashok’s family had given Pinky a powerful privilege through their financial privilege and a respectful social status, she was still constrained by expectations that made her lose control over her life. This disempowering consequence of visibility aligns with Brighenti’s view that visibility “does not constitute anything inherently liberating, nor, conversely, does it necessarily imply oppression. But, in the end, isn’t this open range of possibilities what we expect from a sufficiently general descriptive and interpretive social scientific category (Brighenti, 340). Pinky’s position of visibility did not translate to the control she would have wished for, and the outcome made her unhappy.
The power of physical appearance also gives power to the Vijay character. While trying to understand what living like a man should look like, Balram paints the picture of Vijay, the bus conductor who had “a uniform his silver whistle and the red cord” (Adiga, 22). This visibility that Vijay had built for himself shaped how the others viewed him, especially the young boys in the tea shop, and eventually earned him a seat among the politicians. Balram writes, “Vijay’s family were pig herds, which meant they were the lowest of the low, yet he had made it up in life” (Adiga, 21). Later in the novel, Vijay is seen in the company of Balram’s boss, Stork, in what seems to be a political conversation, and his character is finally depicted as him beating a rickshaw puller to an unconscious state after he tried to protest during voting. His life pattern therefore illustrates how he had to control how society viewed him by reshaping his identity which earned him social mobility and control over the fate of his caste. He used his visibility as the ideal middle-class-looking man to control societal social class categorizations and consequences.
In The White Tiger, control through visibility is not something demonstrated by people from a low economic status only, the politically and economically powerful characters maintain their control over their servants and less privileged individuals through a controlled perception. Looking specifically at the Stork family and their interaction with Balram, one can see that the family uses the money and influence of society to control Balram’s actions and decisions when he is around them and working in their household. One popular example is when Ashok convinced Balram to dress up as a s up as Maharaja so that he could entertain his wife and make her laugh for her birthday. The visibility that is controlling Balram to succumb to such actions of humiliation includes the fact that he had viewed the boss (Ashok) as someone kind to him and because of the family’s power over his life (KARPAGAVALLI and DR E. SUGANTH, 12). This illustration shows that the wealthy families had created their recognition as powerful individuals with immense control over the low-status individuals. The other instance that demonstrates Ashok’s control over Balram is when they convince him to take a fall for Madam Pinky’s accident and go to jail for a crime he did not commit. To demonstrate how the rich have normalized this narrative, Balram writes that “The jails of Delhi are full of drivers who are there behind bars because they are taking the blame for their good, solid middle-class masters” (Adiga, 169). The rich have therefore shaped their control with the notion of being powerful making the servants afraid of what might happen if they do not comply with their life-threatening requests and sometimes demands. In Balram’s case, even though he was frightened by the thought of going to jail, he was more afraid of what may happen if he declined the coerced confession.
Pourquoi et al., (181), bring in a unique perspective by highlighting how Kusum, Balram’s grandmother tried to manipulate the societal perception of gender roles to assert control over her family. The author argues that throughout the novel, Kusum’s role in Balram and Kishan’s life can be interpreted as her attempt to break free from the traditional gender role; she tries to re-shape her identity from an obedient and submissive ideal Indian woman to one that rules her family and is in control of the finances and their marriage decisions. The effort to reshape her role even though it fails at the end, gives Kusum control over her grandsons and she gets to manipulate their decisions about the kind of employment they ought to take and how they are allowed to spend their money. The perception and control, however are met with retaliation as it pushes Balram to see through the control and the manipulated love letters, which is evident when Balram writes “I d,id not want to obey Kusum. She was blackmailing me (Adiga, 114). Therefore, the argument is that creating a vision where she is viewed as the man of the house by those around her gave Kusum the power to control the respect she was awarded by her grandson and be able to make important life decisions but the grandsons.
Comparative Analysis: The White Tiger and The Great Gatsby
Geographical and Historical Contexts
The novel’s historical and geographical contexts significant shapes the characters, the plot, and the manner in which the central themes are explored. The Great Gatsby” is set in the early 1920s, a period refereed to as the Roaring Twenties in American history. This period was essentially characterized by rapid economic growth, cultural diversity, and social change. The novel is set in West Egg and East Egg, which are fictional towns in New York. Therefore, the setting of the novel in a historical period that constructed the idea of American dream and glorified the tireless pursuit of the wealth and status and a geographical place (New York) inherently associated with extravagant lifestyles and partying directed correlates with the novel’s central themes and helps in character development especially in the case of Gatsby. Gatsby is disillusioned by the idea of success that he decides to abandon Daisy and come back at a time when he feels he has managed to attain enough to be worth of her attention and love. He constant throws lavish parties which highlight America’s jazz era at the time and he is obsessed by his wealth status. Gatsby’s final outcome highlights the emptiness of materialism and the fragility of the American Dream which continues to impact many young people even in the contemporary society. The partying from one weekend to the other reflects the moral decay associated with the jazz era in American history.
On the other hand, “The White Tiger” is set in contemporary India post-colonial period. The society is characterized by globalization, urbanization, and the social divide between the rich and poor. The novel takes place in various locations across India, including the bustling metropolis of Delhi and the impoverished rural villages of Laxmangarh. Through Balram’s eyes, Adiga exposes the harsh realities of India’s caste system, political corruption, and exploitation of the underprivileged. The post-colonial historical context helps the author to effectively capture the theme of control as it is a time characterized by tremendous power struggle where people in positions experiences profound privileges and most of them get to high ranks of social status through corruption. The novel’s main character, Balram, who unlike Gatsby, belong to the marginalized ranks of Indian society helps in capturing what it means to be part the low economic level in Indian. In other words, the author uses the protagonist to highlight the inequality and the gasps in resource distribution that exists in the post-colonial period in Indian society.
Similarities in Themes
Even though the two novels are written in different geographical and historical contexts, the author’s exploration of the control through visibility theme demonstrates close similarities in the characters and society. Generally, the two novels put a major focus on socioeconomic status and how they influence the character’s interactions. The authors heavily rely on the social and economic struggles the central characters encounter to demonstrate power struggles and exertion of control through manipulated visibility. Adiga’s novel is set in contemporary Indian society characterized by the wealthy elite and the poor; the wealthy hold privileges and power which they use to manipulate and control those from the lower class reinforcing the system of exploitation and oppression. The wealthy are recognized as powerful; visibility helps them to maintain their social status and get away with various illicit activities such as corruption (Pourqoli et al., 173). The authors creatively demonstrate the inseparable interplay between social economic status and identity. Characters such as Balram constantly exist in two worlds where they tirelessly fight through the war of identity and visibility to climb up the rigid class boundaries and caste. The characters from the less privileged caste have to learn the ways of the rich by re-shaping their identity to attain the same recognition reserved for the wealthy to ensure that they can attain the same control as those from the upper class.
Similarly, Fitzgerald uses the power of social status to strategically demonstrate the idea of control through visibility. Fitzgerald’s American capitalist society has huge similarities with Adiga’s dark and corrupt society. In other words, The Great Gatsby is run by materialistic motivations the same way in The White Tiger characters do everything within their power for material rewards. Great Gatsby’s main character, Gatsby, spends his whole life pursuing wealth to be in the same social class as the love of his life, Daisy. To him, he believes that wealth and being among the wealthy elite group is the only way he could be worthy of Daisy’s attention and love. He adopts a lavish lifestyle to gain the controlling privileges of the rich. Therefore, Balram and Gatsby are both controlled by the social status of the society they exist which shapes their identity. The two main characters retaliate to the harsh realities of the social struggles by constructing personalities that shape their visibility to the outside world and offer them an opportunity to gain control, conquer social challenges, and attain freedom. Therefore, socioeconomic status remains a constant tool exploited by the two authors to effectively depict the theme of control through visibility. However, the ending of the two novels demonstrates the façade of the materialistic things in life. Fitzgerald’s protagonist dies before he can experience the love he had anticipated from Daisy because he dedicated his life to chasing wealth, forcing him to obsess over the past he can no longer attain. At some point in the chase, Gatsby demonstrates that he is in love with the idea of Daisy and not essential to her as a person (Lena, 37). This is depicted by his focus on money and luxury because he associates these things with Daisy. Instead of this effort to end in happiness and a “happy ever after” life, it exposes Gatsby to illegal activities and concludes with his death. Comparably, Balram’s chase of materialistic chase drives him to the despicable act of murderer and the life of a fugitive.
In conclusion, The Great Gatsby and the White Tiger relies on socioeconomic status and physical appearance to effectively depict the power of visibility in controlling social perception and attaining social mobility. The novels heavily rely on their main characters to demonstrate how they reshaped their social visibility to climb up the social status ladder and become a member of the middle class. Balram and Gatsby have considerable similarities as they are used to creatively demonstrate how visibility provides recognition and control. The two worked hard to be recognized and seen as people who deserved to be a part of the elite group of society. They reshaped their identities to be noticed as people who matter in society; Balram changed his identity from a rick saw puller from the sweet-making caste to a wealthy entrepreneur who had control over his life and how people treated him and Gatsby reshaped his identity from the penniless man who once felt invisible at Daisy’s house to one that was known and idolized for his lavish parties and mysterious lifestyle. Also, the two are controlled by the same social expectations they are so desperately trying to escape from by all means. Gatsby does what he does because he believes that as a man, his life is only supposed to go one way and “that is up”; he believes that a man should be defined by wealth and the resources he has under his name. This reflects the values upheld by the American dream and the societal expectations of what a man is expected to be. Similarly, Balram is obsessed by the image of “living like a man” which continuously motivates him to look for means to escape his poor family background. Therefore, the two authors construct societies with similar values and challenges and characters motivated by similar socioeconomic factors.
Works Cited
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Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940. The Great Gatsby. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1925.
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