Theme Of Metaphors In The White Tiger By Aravind Adiga

Research Question: How does Aravind Adiga use metaphors in “The White Tiger” to highlight the contrast between the different sections of Indian society?

Introduction:

Typically, we identify metaphors to be the figure of speech that draws an indirect comparison to bring out an enhanced rhetoric effect. However, metaphors are so strongly ingrained in our language, that all of us think, write, and even speak in metaphors every day. Ironically, the word metaphor itself is a metaphor, as “metaphor” stems from a Greek word that means “transfer” or “carry across”. In the literal sense, metaphors “transfer” meaning from one idea to another, typically associating it with a word.

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger’ is an epistolary novel consisting of a series of letters written by Balram Halwai, an entrepreneur who owns a taxi driving company, for the Chinese Premier, when he visits Bangalore. Balram Halwai is a man who has freed himself from the Darkness and now lives in the Light (The two India’s living side by side). The novel shows us the large gap between the rich and the poor, the struggle of the deprived-class and feudalism in the smaller villages.

The White Tiger, although Aravind Adiga’s debut novel, consists of myriad metaphors to exemplify and enhance the growing disparity present in the two primary divisions of Indian society- the rich and the poor. Although Adiga develops common issues of Globalization, Individualism, and Freedom through his metaphors, he also focuses on