The White Tiger

“The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga is a piece of literature that talks about India left and right. A book that can be half fiction half true. It talks about the fortunate and the unfortunate, the rich and the poor. The irony shown in this book about corruption, oppression of the poor, reality of India vs. the images foreigners have of India help portray our understanding of this novel. The irony in “The White Tiger” shows the corruption in India. Balram Halwai is a student in a school with a teacher that does nothing but sleeps and lay around because he hasn’t gotten his wages for six months. While Balram is looking at this teacher he thinks “You can’t expect a man in a dung heap to smell sweet. Every man in the village knew that he would have done the same in his position.” (28). Balram is admiring the teacher for how he gets money, that no one in a bad school would follow good intentions or morals. The irony was that the teacher gets away with it cleanly, taking all the kids uniform and lunch money. A sign of corruption in a children’s school is shown. The act of taking the kids money only for him shows corruption. When the inspector came for a surprise visit he didn’t really scream at the teacher for doing what he did and just went on to write four sentences on the board for the students to read. After a few boys were picked to read but were unable to, the teacher suggest to the inspector to choose Balram. Balram gets picked and reads. Then the inspector asks who Buddha was Balram responded “An enlightened man.”(29). the inspector corrects him saying that the Buddha was “An enlightened God” (29). This mistake about Buddha saying that he is God when he was actually a man makes the school inspector a character that represents various problems with school systems. This is irony because he is a school inspector yet he gets this question wrong and a half-baked student gets it correct. Since there is corruption in India, it would