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Symbols: The white Tiger

1) The White Tiger:

             Balram’s natural intelligence and integrity set him apart from his peers from an early age. On one occasion, his academic prowess so impresses a visiting school inspector that the official calls him a “White Tiger”: the most noble and intelligent animal in the jungle. Throughout his life, Balram’s concept of himself as a White Tiger and as an exceptional person motivates him to advocate for himself and fight for his own advancement. His conviction that he is somehow special also causes him to feel exempt from traditional moral and legal standards, empowered to live life on his own terms.
              The morning before he murders his master Ashok, Balram encounters a white tiger in the Delhi zoo. After locking eyes with the animal and fainting on the spot, he decides to commit the murder and dictates a letter to his grandmother Kusum apologizing in advance, and explaining that he cannot live in a cage any longer. Balram’s identification with his namesake emboldens him and convinces him that he is justified in moving forward with his plan.



2). The Rooster Coop:
                 The Rooster Coop is Balram’s metaphor for describing the oppression of India’s poor. Roosters in a coop at the market watch one another slaughtered one by one, but are unable or unwilling to rebel and break out of the coop. Similarly, India’s poor people see one another crushed by the wealthy and powerful, defeated by the staggering inequality of Indian society, but are unable to escape the same fate. In fact, he argues that the poor actively stop each other from escaping, either willfully by cutting each other down, or less purposely but just as powerfully, through a culture that makes them expect such abuse and servitude. The Rooster Coop Balram describes is one that’s “guarded from the inside.”
      Balram believes that the traditional Indian family unit keeps the Rooster Coop of social inequality alive. If a servant attempts to escape or disobeys his employer, the superior’s family will punish the servant by murdering or brutally torturing his family. In this way, familial loyalty and love become weaknesses in the context of rooster coop logic. In a country where the rules are stacked so overwhelmingly against the poor, Balram comes to believe that to create a better life and “break out of the Rooster Coop,” one must be willing to sacrifice everything, including attachment to traditional morals and to one’s family.

3). Black Fort.
                     Looking back on his past from his luxurious office in Bangalore, Balram imagines what the detectives and police would have found out about him had they returned to his home village of Laxmangahr. He laughs to himself that the police would never discover the true clue to what differentiated him from the other villagers, what made him capable of imagining a better life: his fascination with the Black Fort.
                        The Black Fort was the only thing of beauty in Balram’s impoverished ancestral village. The fort is a grand old building on a hill above town, constructed by foreign occupiers years ago, which both fascinated and frightened Balram throughout his youth. He claims that his ability to appreciate its beauty marked him early on as different from his fellow villagers and showed his destiny not to remain a slave. When he returns to the village years later with his wealthy master Mr. Ashok and his mistress Pinky Madam, he finally gets the courage to visit the fort alone. From the very top, he looks down on Laxmangahr and spits—he has literally risen above the Rooster Coop, and from within this fort representing the power of former occupiers, he rejects his former life and his family that still lives that life. A short time later, he murders Ashok.

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