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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
Set in modern-day India, Balram’s dizzying rise to fortune is also a story of hectic movement that foregrounds the conflicts and unrest within the nation. The protagonist spends time in four different locations throughout the novel, and each transition is arguably as disorienting as the last. He moves from his hometown of Laxmangarh to Dhanbar, then to Delhi, and then to Bangalore. He switches from rickshaws to Honda Citys, tea shops to glassy new shopping malls. Balram never keeps still in any single place.
The novel’s migratory quality—its diversity of people and places—creates a portrait of modern India in all its overwhelming multiplicity. Balram’s India contains multitudes; it spans water buffalo and seedy red-light districts. It is a country of diseased laborers and sleazy government officials, Muslims and Hindus and slick expatriates. By navigating through and in between these spaces, Balram shows his country’s kaleidoscopic religious and socioeconomic landscape.
These sudden contrasts of place and scenery build disturbing tensions within the story. Balram’s travels expose the reader to all the stark divisions and axes of conflict that underly the nation. There is the country-city division, in which Balram is manipulated by the matriarchal Kusum but also mocked by the other drivers for being a “country-mouse.” Hindus blackmail Muslims, as when Balram creeps up on Ram Persad. Posh westerners like Pinky Madam scoff at his poor hygiene and ignorance. Political and industrial elites jockey against each other while their servants do the same in their own circles. Balram’s country is splintered into factions that endlessly compete for power.
The main conflict, though, is staged between the haves and have-nots. “The history of the world is the history of a ten-thousand-year war of brains between the rich and the poor,” Balram writes. Delhi is split into “two separate cities—inside and outside the dark egg,” and Balram straddles them both in his job as a chauffeur. Often, his most vivid accounts of setting highlight the stark inequalities between sewage-infested slums and gated houses. The rich beat their servants, rig elections, and lord over the poor. Naxals threaten violence, and Balram joins a growing group of cunning social aspirants. The White Tiger refuses to sit still. Instead, it takes the reader to a place where old conventions begin to strangle and humans have pushed themselves to a dangerous tipping point.
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