The White Tiger

by Aravind Adiga

The White Tiger: Style 1 key example

Style
Explanation and Analysis:

Like Balram himself, The White Tiger is brutally quick-witted. Its short, bitingly sarcastic sentences deal out jokes, stereotypes, and conspiracies. Balram mocks India’s “glorious parliamentary democracy” and, at other moments, explains how the Japanese invented cellphones to “diminish the white man’s brains and balls.” The novel’s epistolary format gives freedom for improvisational candor. The story reads as though Balram is speaking to Jiabao himself; the protagonist-narrator digresses and pauses his own story at the end of every chapter.