Bizarre representation of school in “The White Tiger” The Sense of an Ending, Indian Reality, Chain of Corruption Bihar School tragedy, OECD’s programme PISA

1. Representation of school in “The White Tiger”
and “Sense of an Ending”
Hema Goswami
Semester 4
Paper no. 13 The New literatures
Submitted to Department of English, MKBU
Enrollment no. 2069108420180020
Roll no. 13
Year: 2017-19
Email id- hemagoswami474@gmail.com

2. The White
Tiger
“The White Tiger”
tells a story about the
transformation of a
driver in Delhi- a
young man from
Bihar, a state that is
always referred to as
Darkness-into an
entrepreneur in
Bangalore
The Sense of
an Ending
The sense of an
ending is narrated
by a retired man
named Tony
Webster, who
recalls how he and
his clique met
Adrian Finn at
school
Setting: London,
England

3. Bizarre representation of school in “The
White Tiger”
“Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half baked, because we
were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skull, look in with a
penlight, and you will find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or
mathematics remembered from school textbooks ….sentences about politics read in
a newspaper…triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry
textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All
India Radio news Bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like wizard on the
ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep—All these ideas, half formed and half
digested and half correct, mix up with other half cooked ideas in your head, and I
guess these half formed-ideas bugger one another, and make more half formed
ideas, and this is what you act on and live with.”

4. Indian Reality
Rural Poverty Uneven social
groups
Miserable life: Men
women and children
work like animals and
die in miserable
condition
Chain of
Corruption

5. Bihar School tragedy
The Economic times, ET Bureau, July 19, 2013
1. Symptom of poor governance
2. More than 20 children have died after
eating mid-day meal, cooked in their
school
3. The food stuff was stored in the home
of the principal, who is now
absconding and all the supplies were
bought from the shop owned by her
husband also on the run.
4. Such episodes are rarer in the south,
successive governments in Tamil Nadu
have been running mid day meal
schemes since 1960s

6. Representation of school in “The Sense of
an Ending”
1. Much Elitist outside the school
2. Level is very high- “Now you will remember that I asked you to
do some preliminary reading about the reign of Henry the
Eighth.”(History class)
3. English class-
“We had a double English Period with Phil Dixon, He liked to use
contemporary texts, and would throw out sudden challenges.
Birth and copulation, and Death’-That’s what T.S Eliot says it’s all
about. Any comments.”

7. Dark side Bright side
The White Tiger The Sense of an ending
Both writers shown criti
cism of their culture in d
ifferent way.

8. OECD’s programme PISA
1. PISA is the OECD’s programme for international student assessment.
2. Every three year it tests 15 year old students from all over the world in reading, mathematics
and science to improve quality of education system in schools at international level.

9. Works Cited
ET Bureau. "Bihar school tragedy is a symptom of poor g
overnance ." news. 2013.
Ramani, Dr. Ch. Venkata. "Aravind Adiga’s The White Tig
er: A Representation of Indian." IJELLH (2015): 7.

10. Thank you