."The White Tiger", written by Aravind Adiga and published in 2008, is a fictional, epistolary novel, which provides a darkly humorous perspective of India's class struggle in a globalized world

"The White Tiger" is a brilliant production of social commentary, attuned to the inequalities that persist despite India's new prosperity. It correctly identifies and deflates middle-class India's collective euphoria. "The White Tiger", written by Aravind Adiga and published in 2008, is a fictional, epistolary novel, which provides a darkly humorous perspective of India's class struggle in a globalized world as told through a retrospective narration through letters by Balram Halwai to the Premier of China, who is set to be visiting India. Balram is an Indian man from an impoverished background and son of a rickshaw-puller, born in the village of Laxmangarh. He describes his basic story early on: he skillfully transcended his humble beginnings to become a chauffeur and later a successful entrepreneur in Bangalore, mainly through the murder of Mr Ashok, his employer. The novel is rich in symbolism and imagery in addition to Adiga's extensive use of figurative language such as metaphors, which successfully highlight and emphasize to the reader the concern of social breakdown, self-interest, corruption, and morality in Indian society in the aftermath of India's liberation from British rule, which lasted from 1858 to 1947.

Adiga strategically utilizes animal imagery to portray an India that has abdicated its traditional social structure and outgrown a conventional moral framework, prompting the reader to consider India's social and moral collapse carefully. As Balram describes his flawed education, the text states, "You, young man, are an intelligent, honest, vivacious fellow in this crowd of thugs and idiots. In any jungle, what is the rarest of animals—the creature that comes along only once in a generation?" "The white tiger." "That's what you are, in this jungle." The white tiger symbolizes both Balram's faculties and his moral integrity. The text's use of animal imagery foreshadows to the audience how the protagonist will continue to be entrapped by social forces. The teacher may affirm that Balram is a white tiger, but he qualifies it with the phrase "in this jungle," drawing attention to the wild and brutal environment in which Balram finds himself. The effect of the White Tiger symbolism creates a foreboding and emergent atmosphere, and the audience is forced to feel empathetic to Indian people who have sacrifice morality as they fight for survival within India's cutthroat social landscape. This idea is further supported as the text reads, "See, this country, in its days of greatness, when it was the richest nation on earth, was like a zoo... the day the British left—the cages had been let open; and the animals had attacked and ripped each other apart and jungle law replaced zoo law." Once more, Balram uses an extended animal metaphor in order to explain the way that people interact. In this analogy, the older India was a "zoo" because it was rigorously structured by the caste system: Each person (i.e. animal) was allotted a particular position based on his birth and had little to no hope of ever-changing that position. Nevertheless, after the British departed, Balram contends, the zoo transformed into a jungle. This creates an ambivalent perspective in the reader's mind on the changing nature of Indian society; the audience understands both desirable mobility and undesirable unrest in the changes.