In this presentation you will find some differences and the similarities between the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" and the text "The White Tiger". professions of both the protagonists "Balram Halwai" and "Jamal Malik".

1. COMPARISON BETWEEN "THE WHITE
TIGER" AND THE MOVIE "SLUMDOG
MILLIONAIRE"
Presented by- Divya Choudhary
Semester- 4
Paper no.- 13
paper name – The New literature
Batch Year- 2015-17
Enrolment No.- PG15101007
Email id- choudharydivya400@gmail.com
Submitted to- Smt. S B Gardi
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University

2. ABOUT AUTHOR
• Aravind Adiga is an Indo-Australian
writer and journalist.
• His debut novel, The White Tiger,
won the 2008 Man Booker Prize.
• Aravind Adiga was born in Madras
on 23 October 1974.
• Adiga grew up in Mangalore and
studied at Canara High School.
• He is the fourth Indian-born author
to win the prize, after Salman
Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran
Desai.

3. • Full title: The White Tiger
• Author: Aravind Adiga.
• Type of work: Novel
• Genre: Fiction novel, Epistolary novel, Dark Comedy,
Satire
• LANGUAGE: Indian English
• Date of first PUBLICATION: April 22, 2008
• NARRATOR: Balram Halwai
• Technique: Flashback
• Climax: Balram kills his master Ashok and run away
to Bangalore.
• Protagonist: Balram Halwai

4. • Setting (place): Various location in India including
Laxmangarh, Delhi, Dhanbad, Bangalore.
• Point of view: The novel is from the perspective of
Balram Halwai, who is the mouthpiece of Arvind
Adiga himself.
• Themes: The Indian family, Lightness and Darkness,
Marriage in India, Globalization, The cast system,
India’s relationship to china, Freedom, Individualism,
corruption, Class Conflict, Good v/s Evil, Old Morality
V/S New Morality, Eurocentrism
• SYMBOLS: Rooster Coop, Chandelier, Cars, Delhi’s
Road, Green Lizard, Black fort, black ogre in car etc.
• Motif: India of light and India of darkness

5. THE WHITE TIGER
• The novel studies the contrast between India's
rise as a modern global economy and the lead
character, Balram, who comes from crushing
rural poverty.
• “At a time when India is going through great
changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the
world from the West, it is important that writers
like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of
[Indian] society. That's what I'm trying to do –
it is not an attack on the country, it's about the
greater process of self-examination.”

6. • “See, the poor dream all their lives of getting
enough to eat and looking like the rich. And
what do the rich dream of?? Losing weight
and looking like the poor.”
- Aravind Adiga, The White
Tiger
• The entire novel is narrated through letters
by Balram Halwai to the Premier of China,
who will soon be visiting India.

7. Balram goes to Delhi,
Accident by Pinky
madam and Ashok’s
murder by Balram
Balram leaves the
school, Balram finds
work at Stork’s home
Balram leaves
the school,
Balram finds
work at Stork’s
home
Balram succeeds
in escaping and
becomes
entrepreneur in
Bangalore
Plot
overview

8. • “The India of Light and the India
of Darkness.”
• “Please understand, Your
Excellency, that India is two
countries in one: an India of
Light, and an India of
Darkness.”
• An entrepreneur who emerges
from the ‘India of Darkness” and
enters into the ‘India of Light’
• Two ‘Indias’ in one India.

9. LIGHTNESS AND DARKNESS
• Duality of light and dark.
• Light then becomes a
multifaceted symbol of time,
wealth, location and
obligation.
• While Darkness represent
the past, poverty, rural
India and most importantly
loyality to family and
master.

10. • Jamal Malik
• Latika
• Salim Malik
• Prem Kapoor (Anil
Kapoor)
• Police Inspector
• Balram Harwai
• Wen Jiabo
• Mr. Ashok
• Pinky Madam
• Kusum
• Vikram Halwai
• Kishan
• Dharam
MAJOR CHARACTERS
The White Tiger Slumdog Millionaire

11. THE WHITE TIGER & SLUMDOG
MILLIONAIRE
• The White Tiger is the story of
Balram Halwai’s life as a self-
declared “self-made
entrepreneur”: a rickshaw
driver’s son who skillfully
climbs India’s social ladder to
become a chauffer and later a
successful businessman.
• The film is based on a teen
who grew up in the slums in
Mumbai. He becomes a
contestant on the Indian
version of "Who Wants To Be
A Millionaire?“.

12. • Balram recounts his life
story in a letter to visiting
Chinese official Premier
Wen Jiabao, with the goal
of educating the premier
about entrepreneurship in
India.
• He is prevented under
notion of cheating as he
knew all the answers and
wasn’t educated. While
being interrogated, events
from his life history are
shown which explain why
he knows the answers.

13. • Balram writes from his
luxurious office in the
city of Bangalore, but
the story begins in his
rural ancestral village of
Laxmangahr.
• In the beginning of the
film, he is one question
away from 20 million
rupees, the biggest prize
of the contest.

14. SIMILARITIES IN BOTH MOVIE AND
NOVEL
• The starting point is that they’re both Indian
works, based in India and about India.
• The other thing is both their storylines are
about underdog characters from miserable
backgrounds and childhoods rising in an
unlikely manner to achieve success in life.
• The main thing is that both feature an India
in which injustice, suffering and poverty are
significant and abundant in society.

15. • The main plot focus between the two differs
markedly in that with White Tiger, the
portrayal of social problems is a main theme
while Slumdog has a romantic element as its
central part of its storyline with poverty and
crime as significant but accompanying.
• They both are the victims of the poor societal
system in India; Jamal being tortured and
Balram being treated like a slave in the family
he works for.

16. • In The White Tiger Balram dreamt all his life of
becoming something successful and making
something of himself. Jamal, on the other hand,
lived his life focusing on finding the love of his life –
Latika. He applied to be on the show be cause he
was hoping that Latika would be watching him in
the show – not to win the money.
• One clear similarity is that the both main characters
come from extreme poor conditions. Balram Halwai
grows up in a poor family with a low caste in a
small town in India and Jamal becomes homeless at
a very young age and starts to live on the streets in
the slum.

17. PROFESSION OF BOTH THE
PROTAGONISTS
• Balram and his brother
Kishan begin working in
a teashop in nearby
Dhanbad, Balram
neglects his duties and
spends his days listening
to customers’
conversations.
• He works at a call
center, serving tea to the
telephone operators.

18. BALRAM HALWAI
• Balram is an Indian man from an impoverished
background, born in the village of Laxmangarh.
• Balram Halwai is a poor Indian villager whose
great ambition dead him to the highpoint of Indian
business culture, the world of the Bangalore
industrialist.
• One of the most important facts the school inspector
named him “The White Tiger”, “The rarest animal
in the jungle (P.30) because he is the cleverest child
in Laxmangarh.”

19. KISHAN HALWAI
• Kishan is Balram’s older brother who cares for him
after their father dies. Though Kishan is an
influential, fatherly figure in Balram’s life.
• Kishan is Balram’s older brother who cares for him
after their father dies. Though Kishan is an
influential, fatherly figure in Balram’s life, Balram
laments his brother’s lack of “entrepreneurial
spirit”.
• Kusum allows Kishan to work him hard, take most
of his wages, and arrange his marriage early in life,
before he can support a family.

20. JAMAL MALIK
Uneducated – grew up in the slums of
Mumbai where children are forced to
work at an early age. Even if there are
opportunities, children have to make a
living instead of going to school.
Ambitious - he takes risks that others
would never take to achieve his goals.
he dives into a hole full of excrement so
that he could get out of the toilet in
order to get an autograph of his famous
singer. He introduces himself as a cook
so that he can enter Javed’s house which
is another big risk.

21. SALIM MALIK
• Jamal’s older brother
• He is hungry for money;
- He sells Jamal’s autograph when they are little
kids.
- He gets angry to lose his customer because
Jamal doesn’t get out of the toilet.
• He is hungry for power;
- Killing Maman is easy for him and he starts to
work for Javed, another gang leader.
- He says “He says I do anything Javed asks”
- He points a gun at Jamal’s head and threatens
him: “I am number 1 now... “ “The man with the
colt 45 (a type of gun) says ‘Shut up’”

22. CONFLICT
• Conflict is the struggle between opposing
forces.
A story is not a real story without a
conflict. There must be some kind of a
problem for the action to develop.
Conflict is one of the most important
elements of stories as it causes the action.
Without a conflict, the plot would not be
realistic.

24. TO SUM UP…
• Why does Balram wants to become a
master? And why does he killed his master?
• What do you think the film is saying about
the globalization of culture through media?
We see the game show “Who Wants to be a
Millionaire?” adapted in the Indian culture.
Is this a sign of progress? Why or why not?
What is this film saying about the effect of
money on culture?