Postmodernism: Analysing Arvind Aadiga’s The White Tiger

Abstract

Lyotard broke the incredulity about mythic narratives that have been canonized in the great literary tradition of West.  He resisted the idea of universalizing all the narratives into one single packet or category of ultimate objectives like growth, development, progress, triumph et al.  His assertion to replace meta-narratives with petits récits can be traced in Aravind Adiga’sBooker Prize winning text The White Tiger (2008).    The novel foregrounds the elements of ‘narcissism’ in narrative technique, that is, it focuses and debates its own end proving protagonist’s life a paradox itself.  It blends the strictly rigid structures of  high and low class, making the text a hybrid product.  An underdog who resuscitates and embarks on his quest to lead a stately life as “an entrepreneur” and as “a thinking man” make the text revisit past with the irony of  hierarchal order being not only broken down but also its rigid boundaries being blurred with a man moving in and out of it.  Adiga's novel talks about all these issues at a time when majority of people have busied themselves in the celebration of a new emerging, and shining India. Present research is a study of Adiga's “little narratives” revolving around the protagonist, Balram, who breaks totalitarian structures and revel in boulevards which are otherwise censored, through a postmodernist lens.