Narrative Techniques in TheWhiteTiger

Narrative technique examines how a narration is done in a work of fiction and what are the
multiple devices of storytelling at work in a work such as a novel. Narrative technique is central
to our understanding of the novel as a study of it primarily examines the techniques with which
the author has employed language in narration. This paper examines the narrative techniques
used by Aravind Adiga in the novel The White Tiger by focusing on four aspects of narration-
narrator, vision, voice and time. These four aspects combine to create a narrative and examining
them can explain the narrative techniques at work in the novel.
The White Tiger is narrated by its protagonist, Balram Halwai. The novel proceeds through
first person narration and we see the world as seen and experienced by Balram. Balram is the
transmitter of the story from the author to the reader. He has absolute dominance on the
narrative voice and it is hard to see other characters as independent agents in the sense that they
have a free or individual voice. The voice of other characters reach the reader heavily mediated
by Balrams narrative voice.
The narration is aimed, according to the story, at the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabo, who is
scheduled to visit Bangalore. The implied reader of the narrative however is a larger audience,
who broadly fall into the categories of upper class, upper caste Indians as well as most
foreigners. The readership is supposed to be a vast and diverse group whose only connecting
quality is that they are unfamiliar or unacquainted with the hinterlands of India, where Balram
was born and brought up. The narration is an exercise in bringing this hinterland to this
audience. As the narratee of the novel, Wen Jiabo is an intriguing choice. He represents
China, a growing power and a country which is often looked upon with awe and envy by many
Indians, especially when the topics of development and economic growth come into discussion.
The novel places the Chinese Premier as eager to learn about India, and the truth about
Bangalore. The implied reader too then is someone who wants to know about the truth about
India but is very likely to be misled by official, national propaganda of the likes of India
Shining. An idea of to whom Adiga is narrating the story assumes great importance, especially
as the novel seeks to portray the condition of India and the predicament of its often unseen and
underdeveloped regions. While the narratee is largely a textual construct, it is reasonable to
assume that Adiga is reaching out to the implied audience and that he is conveying a certain
message and idea of India through his narration.
The term point of view, often used when discussing narrative techniques, combines the
aspects of vision and voice. Vision is the criteria that determines who sees the action, or through
whom the reader can see the action, and to what extent this vision is complete or aware of the
narrative action when it happens. One may conceive of different types of narrative visions
depending upon the ratio between the narrators knowledge of events and the characters
knowledge of these events. In The White Tiger, the narrator controls the plot tightly and is
aware of most events that are relevant to the story. Since the story focuses upon the life of the
narrator himself, the vision of the narrator is absolute. One may observe that Balrams
knowledge of events, aided by hindsight, is more than what the characters know. To maintain
this, Adiga uses the narrative techniques of flashback and flashforward. However, we are also
given instances where Balrams naivet means that he often realises the true nature of events
only at a later time. His ideas regarding the relationship between Ashok and Uma is a prominent
example of the characters knowledge exceeding that of the narrator. Thus, in this novel, we
may observe the degrees of vision altering from time to time. Further, we are privy only to
Balrams vision throughout the novel. We do not see any event through the eyes of any other
character. The narrators voice does not become a soundtrack to the vision of another character.
The vision afforded to the reader in this novel is thus fixed.
However, the idea of vision should not be restricted to just the act of seeing. It should also
include how the narrator conceptualizes other characters and events. It involved thought
process in addition to the physical act of seeing. In this regard, Balram has a very distinctive
vision of the world. It is not a sophisticated or nuanced way of looking at the world, but is
rather very blunt and obviously a product of his self-interests and instinct for survival. He does
not maintain any semblance of objectivity in his narrative. He almost flippantly lets his biases
determine his descriptions and characterisations of the village of Laxmangarh and its people.
The voice of the narrator, Balram, is in first person throughout the novel. Further, Balram is
directly involved in the action and is often the principal focus of the narration. It is an account
of the acts he commits and the things that happen to him. Almost all of the action is narrated at
the level at which it occurs. This is possible because most of the action focuses on the narrator
himself. However, there are some points in the novel when Balram is only a spectator to events
that occur to other people. The most prominent of these events concern Ashok, his master. On
these occasions, the narrative shifts to being about the action rather than the action itself. In
The White Tiger, even in these occasions, Balram is the main agent. He is the active consumer
of the events that happen before his eyes. We are never given access to the experiences, feelings
or thoughts of other characters who are the primary actors in many events. Rather, we see them
in the way Balram consumes these events.
The voice of a narration is also a carrier of ideologies that are present in, or acts upon, the
society that the novel talks about. The voice of narration is essentially language and the
expression of a certain discourse that has political and cultural ideologies associated with it.
The narrative of Balram is actively opposed, in voice and ideology, to the speech of other
characters, especially those of the upper classes. While the voice of Balram always tries to
impose itself upon the novel, one can find other voices opposed to Balram frequently rising,
only to be pushed back.
The implied readers, as well as the narratee, are distanced from the narrator by virtue of their
class positions. The voice of the narrator becomes a technique with which the author tries to
reduce this distance and make the reader sympathise with the narrator. By exposing the true
nature of class dynamics in India, Balram appeals to a sense of fairness or justice in Wen Jiabo
as well as in the reader to sympathise with his cause. The success of Adigas narrative technique
lies in how far he can persuade the reader to sympathise with a protagonist who murders his
master with a broken bottle, steals his car and money to set up his own business. This sympathy
is garnered chiefly through presenting Balram as someone who comes from a socially
oppressed and backward milieu that the only way he can break free of all that holds him back
is through violence. The narrator may be broadly said to have three roles- reporting,
interpreting and evaluating facts, characters and events. It is through tweaking and
manipulating these criteria that Adiga evolves a narrative technique that can make the reader
sympathise with Balram. Thus, Balram underreports or misreports some facts, such as that the
Halwai caste is a middle level caste and thus not the most oppressed ones in the Darkness and
probably even complicit in the oppression of lower castes. Balrams narrative technique uses
such misreporting and misinterpretation in order to reduce the affective and ethical distance
between the reader and the narrator.
The narrative of The White Tiger does not progress in a linear fashion. The way time operates
in a narrative can be examined under different criteria. One such criteria is the order in which
the events of the story are presented in the narrative. The White Tiger uses the devices of
flashback and flashforward to present the story. The narration often jumps between time
frames, from Balrams present to his past and back. Balram occasionally breaks the narrative
chain to directly address the Chinese Premier, his intended audience, and by extension, the
reader, to comment upon certain events or certain characteristics of the society and people from
his current vantage point. The novel thus jumps from one temporal frame to another. The use
of flashbacks enables a strong narrator voice and also brings out the contrast between the
current Balram and the various Balrams at different points of the story. The flashback and
flashforward are common techniques used in letter writing as well. As the letter, novel and all
forms of narration essentially recount events of the past, it is common to comment upon it with
the aid of hindsight. The rigid linearity of a narrative is, in this sense, an artificiality. By using
these devices, Adiga is able to bring an authenticity to the narration and bring out the affective
nature of the letter as a narrative form.
A second criteria that may be used is that of duration. This criteria looks at the relation between
the amount of time an event would actually take and the amount of time that is devoted to this
event in the narrative. For the most part, the narrative in The White Tiger maintains a proportion
with regard to the time events take in real life. A departure from this is most evident towards
the end of the novel, where Balram makes his escape from Delhi after killing Ashok. But the
main action of the narrative, Balrams rise from Laxmangarh to Delhi and his life there,
culminating in the murder of his master is narrated in a uniform fashion, where large periods
of time are not elided over in a few sentences.
A third category that one may use is the frequency with which the narrative describes a certain
event. In The White Tiger no particular event is narrated repeatedly, though Adiga goes back
to certain places as symbols or motifs. While no event is repeated in narration, Adiga ensures
that key images from several incidents, such as the lizard, the Black Fort, the water buffalo and
many others are present and referenced in different parts of the narration.
The novel tells the story of a teenage boy, born and raised in the village of Laxmangarh in
Bihar, who overcomes the forces of caste and class through nefarious and questionable methods
to work in Delhi and to finally become an entrepreneur in Bangalore. The narrative sequence
bears a semblance to the classical five part structure proposed by Gustav Freytag. The novel
begins with an exposition as we are introduced to the protagonist, Balram, and a vivid and
damning picture of his ancestral village. The reader is given a comprehensive view of the
political and cultural forces at play in the village and the dominant power structures that define
the lives of people. The story of Balram, right from his childhood, serves as an illustration of
how the village works. The action begins to rise as we are given occasional glances into
Balrams innate ambition and his latent desire to escape from all that constricts him. This part
of the narrative shows Balram learning the art of living in the margins and peripheries, as a
servant to the more affluent. We see him bloom as a street smart driver, increasingly capable
of looking after himself, learning how to negotiate his masters and the city and nurture his
ambition of one day being his own man. The action rises to a pitch and reaches the climax
when Balram kills Ashok, his master, steals a large amount of money and escapes from Delhi.
The action falls as we are fast tracked into the present of the narrator and reaches a denouement
when Balram lets us know his future plans and a prophecy on the condition of India.
The White Tiger comes under the category of epistolary novel, as it is written in the form of
letters to the Chinese Premier. Balram writes a set of e-mails, seeking to expose the true nature
of Bangalore and India, which the Chinese Premier is apparently eager to understand. Adiga
uses the epistolary form as a device to facilitate a first person narrative. The e-mails serve as
expressions of Balrams personal thoughts and feelings about the conditions in which he grew
up and the methods which he had to adopt to break free of them. The letters allow Adiga to
construct a deeply personal narrative in the first person, without having to resort to an
omniscient narrator. It presents the story as shaped by Balrams view of things, his biases and
personal experience. It also enables Adiga to give Balram a unique and characteristic narrative
voice and world view.
The use of the epistolary form as a narrative technique is interesting, given the history of the
form. The epistolary form first came into prominence in the seventeenth century and was one
of the preferred forms in the early days of the novel. The epistolary form democratised the art
of literary writing, especially as the novel took root among the middle classes and especially
women. These categories of people did not traditionally have a training in classical literature,
methods of writing and rhetoric. The art of writing letters, and writing novels under the guise
of letters, soon emerged as an attractive proposition to writers who came from these classes.
Balram is similarly a member of a class with low literacy and almost no tradition in writing
novels in English. In the novel itself, we are told that Balram is perhaps the only student in the
village school who is passably literate. Balram is forced to drop out of school soon and he does
not return to formal education after that. Originating from such a background, one does not
expect the protagonist to be well versed in the art of constructing a narrative. Adiga uses the
epistolary form to add to the authenticity of Balrams narrative. There is no reason for someone
like Balram to write a novel. What we read as the novel is presented as a series of letters,
perhaps a more plausible product from one of the sons of the Darkness.
Indeed, it is inconceivable that Wen Jiabo, then Chinese Premier, would reply to Balrams e-
mails. Adiga does not even tell us if Balram actually sent the e-mails or whether he has just
typed them out. Further, Balram would never be afforded the opportunity of actually meeting
Jiabo, especially as he is one of the least known entrepreneurs of Bangalore. Balrams e-mails
are a form of communication which would be impossible in any other form- he cannot tell his
story directly to Jiabo or to the world as he would not be given such an opportunity. His letter
is a creation of an opportunity, a voice to narrate a story.
The epistolary novel is not only about the letters and its writer, but also about the reader and
how readers interpret letters. One can only wonder what Wen Jiabo might make of the novel,
but it is obvious that it is also addressed to those Indians who live in the light, who are blissfully
unaware of the lives that a large section of the country lead. The narrative invites these
outsiders, as much an other to Balram as the Chinese Premier, to interpret the story of his life,
to understand the predicament of the Darkness.
At the end of the first e-mail, the reader is told that Balram slit the throat of his master, Ashok.
The climax of the narrative is thus exposed in the exposition itself. The rest of the novel is an
explanation, patiently constructed, as to how a sequence of events led to the climax. Adiga
maintains the narrative tension and suspense by making the climactic act appear really difficult
or hard for Balram. Adigas narrative paints a portrait where the odds are stacked against a
servant killing his master, where it would take extraordinary amounts of courage, conviction
and individualism to commit such an act. Balram killing Ashok is a release for the protagonist
from his oppressive social conditions, but also a release of the narrative tension that was being
built from the first page of the novel. It is a fine example of a character being at odds with his
social surroundings and acting in a manner that is completely unwarranted, or unexpected of
him. It is precisely the unexpected nature of Balrams act that makes the narrative tension
possible. At the same time, the reader has been privy to Balrams character, his thoughts and
feelings and his ambition from the start and know that this is exactly what he wants to do. Thus,
there is no surprise in the sense that the reader, equipped with hindsight, does not expect Balram
to kill his master. The novel, as a genre that talks about the past, enables the reader to look back
upon the events.
The narrative in The White Tiger proceeds through the construction and exploration of
difference. Balram continually constructs oppositions between light/dark, big bellies/small
bellies, landlords/villagers and many others. It is through exploring the opposition between
each category that Balram moves ahead. He is quick to consign things into any one side of
these binaries. There is no doubt as to which sides of these binaries Balram identifies with. His
relationship with people and objects are often processed through the process of labelling and
categorizing. Thus, the narrative proceeds though a Manichean dualism.
A prominent dualism that runs through the novel is that of light and dark. Balrams village,
Laxmangarh, is situated in the Darkness. The main motifs of the village are described as black
and dark. Adiga creates a chiaroscuro of sorts as the narrative shifts between the shining India
and the Darkness. The Light is where everybody wants to be and yet Balram and other
immigrants from Darkness often find this world strange and untenable to their sense of
morality. Adiga uses the imagery of the light and dark to bring out the experience of the often
unseen underclass as they balance themselves between the two Indias to earn a living. There is
the Ganga, supposedly life giving, but filled with black muck which drags down everything
and everyone. It is the black river, river of Death, which can chock and stunt. Though known
as the river of illumination, everywhere it flows is the Darkness. Opposite to what the Prime
Minister and the government might tell Wen Jiabo, it is hardly pure.
Perhaps the most prominent symbol in Balrams life in the darkness and one that plays a role
in telling the reader of the transformation he makes is the Black Fort. The fort rises over
Lamnagarh, a reminder of its centuries of subservience. It is a source of unknown fear,
symbolised by darkness. When Balram finally climbs the hill and reaches the fort, a shift in his
outlook is evident. He looks upon his village and spits. He spits on the Black Fort and all that
which had held him in the binds of ignorant fear. The act of conquering the Black Fort becomes
the launching pad from where he slits Ashoks throat in eight months. His grandmother Kusum,
who stands for the old and traditional that has stifled the Darkness, discourages him from
climbing the hill through a rhetoric of fear. By disregarding the fear that was instilled in him
from a young age, Balram conquers his masters and the Black Fort.
The narrative of The White Tiger can be classified in many ways. The novel is obviously a
picaresque narrative in that it tells the story of a jaunty rascal or a rogue who lives by his wits
to get the better of his social superiors and conditions. The very nature of the picaresque
narrative rejects the idea that ones destiny is determined by the social status into which one is
born. The White Tiger is a novel that emphasises this ideology. The distance between the
persona of Balram and his younger selves serve as the basis for an important dynamic in the
novel. The narration is episodic in structure, each letter serving as an episode or a section.
Balram is shown moving from place to place in a struggle for survival and the novel finishes
with an open ending, though the social status of the picaro is relatively secure. The novel is
also deeply satiric, especially about the social mores of the urban elite and rich. Adigas
narrative technique is mocking of greed and avarice of the village landlords and their
shenanigans in Delhi. It does not spare even the liberal face of the master, embodied in Ashok,
Balrams master. The narrative itself is told in plain and everyday language that the picaro that
is Balram would be likely to use and understand. It does not have a sophisticated grand style
or flourish, but stays true to the narrative tone and voice of the protagonist. The novel is hardly
an example of a perfect or classic picaresque novel, departing on many counts from the
traditional conception or definition of the genre. As opposed to the conventional idea, Balrams
acts definitely fall under the category of the criminal, having murdered a man by means of a
whiskey bottle to the head. The novel also has a well-defined plot and Balram exhibits a
development or change in character as the narrative proceeds.
The White Tiger is thus also a Bildungsroman. The novel traces the growth of Balram from
being a country-mouse to a white tiger. It is a narrative of a village bumpkins growth into a
successful social and business entrepreneur and thus a coming of age narrative. The novel
tracks Balrams passage and growth through life, from his first job, his educational experiences,
his first forays into the city, his first sexual experience, his growth as a driver, the stages of
earning the trust of his masters and finally his attainment of a new social identity. We see
Balram at the start of the novel as a boy approaching adulthood and we are witness to his
growth into a successful man, a man who has realized his vision. Though the narrative by its
nature does not put Balram through a spiritual crisis, he undergoes several experiences that
changes him as a person. These changes are perhaps most evident when we see how he deals
with the family of a young man who is killed by one of his drivers. He is still the street savvy
businessman who puts his business interests first, but he has grown beyond the callous and
capitalist interests of his masters into a more humane approach. The novel does not show us a
Balram who tries to change the world, but it tells the story of a man who tries to get the best he
can out of the society around him. That can be made to happen only by achieving class mobility,
by moving into the upper classes. Balram as a member of the lower class is the problematic
element of this Bildungsroman. He reconciles with the concrete society around him by finding
a place for himself in the upper echelons of society, but yet remaining invisible. If the
Bildungsroman tracks the progressive development of a character into masterful selfhood, the
narrative of The White Tiger fits perfectly.