Solidarity with the dispossessed or outcast can
often provide writers with material that moves or provokes. In what ways have
at least two writers you have studied used such situations?
Solidarity.
A unity of a group or class with the same interests, objectives and standards.
But what happens when one breaks out? Two novels that include such phenomena
are the Assault and the White Tiger. You have to look behind the scenes to
understand the solidarity within these two books, and how an outcast creates as
well as catharsis but also provocation. What does it take to be an outcast?
From the dark coming into the light through illegal action or being caught in
the past, when there is no way out but the truth and everyone around you moves
on.
“In any
jungle, what is the rarest of animals- the creature that comes along only once
in a generation? I thought about it and said “The white tiger”(30). From the
beginning on through out the whole book this is a recurring symbol, a motif. It
ties into the theme of I am a social entrepreneur, which carries out thought
the whole book and demonstrates the outcast of an Indian entrepreneur, Balram. He
brought himself several times out of the standards, but breaking out of the
darkness also known as the Rooster Coop into the Light, was an achievement and
his life goal. Not a lot have the opportunity and courage as him to make the
final move, which made him so special.
“Deep
inside the tunnel of the past…”(108). Being different than all the others.
Trying to avoid, what he wants to know. Doesn’t that seem a little paradoxical?
In the Assault Anton’s life turned out to be different than expected, the whole
assault, not even with the intension to hurt his family, messed up his life.
Anton is stuck in the past, and hardly moves on. Everyone involved has left the
past, but Anton can’t let go, even though he tried to avoid it as much as he
can. Fate is his enemy that keeps on trapping him and giving him more than he
wants. This creates catharsis for the character, as he has lost everything but
doesn’t have the knowledge to carry on, but his whole mind is set to avoid it.
The time
matters. Solve the past to move on, look into the future to reach. Both novels
are episodic divided. The assault goes by important events in Dutch history
while the White Tiger refers back to important events in Balram’s life set into
seven letters to the Premier of China, each beginning and ending of the
chapters goes into present. Especially in the White Tiger, it is the odd in the
solidarity. The whole book focuses on his career paths, but skips in between to
his actual life. In someway it brings one always back into the real time, but
also provokes the reader because they want to keep on reading. This is a
different type of outcast, which involves the structure of the writing style.
In the Assault this in not a very dominant, but in every chapter Anton learns
more about fate.
One way or the other, the truth is always the best.
Anton learned through fate the truth about the past. "Anton caught the
following sentence: I shot him first in the back, then in the shoulder, and
then in the stomach as I bicycled past him." (p.108) Just by coincidence
does he find out the initial cause of the death of his family. All his life he
wants to avoid it. “A victim? Of course…yet at the same time, he felt as it had
all happened to someone else.”(112), because Anton is so desperately involved
with the idea of avoiding the past, even though he knows he’s been the victim,
it all seems unrealistic. Anton is the outcast, of the story. The whole assault
made him change his lifestyle, and chase after a girl that mostly likely was
already dead long ago. When slowly starting
to find out the whole story, he slowly starts coming out of the tunnel of the
past to the light. This is a reversed relationship, from being an outcast
coming back to solidarity, when it’s usually being part of it and breaking out
or being pushed out.
India, a
country with two faces. The dark and the light, but nothing in between. Through
corruption Balram comes from the darkness into the light. “Can a man break out
of the Rooster Coop?... it would, in fact, take a white tiger. You are
listening to a story of a social entrepreneur, sir.”(176-177). Back to the
social entrepreneur, the murder was his ticket to the light of India. Balram
was one of few who took courage to kill his master, gain his power to make it
up to his own world. No guilt, but in fact responsibility did he feel after
committing the crime. They say “the rooster coop is guarded from inside”(193)
but once the guard is killed, Balram found his way out. It also shows that
being an outcast, does not always have to be bad for the psychology of someone,
here becoming one, the desperation to join the light is immense disturbing for
Balram. But was it right to take a life to enjoy ones own?
A loss of
family “all because of some lizards”(184). Was it right to move the body to
save some lizards and have a whole family killed instead? We all move one, what
makes one an outcast? Being different. Anton chose to live his life, avoiding
the past, but it didn’t work. In his mind he had an image of a woman he never
saw, but talked to, striving to meet her, what he didn’t consciously know was
that she was already dead. That the lizards were the reason was not found out
until the end that makes it so provoking that the character itself doesn’t want
to find out but his readers. But the loss of his family created such a huge
amount of catharsis that it weights itself out, and the conclusion at the end,
is rather an open discussion. Lizards or Family Steenwijk?
Lack
of health care, family loyalty, master’s pressure, no education, political
problems, corruption and no structure, the life of Balram. Though spying at
teashops, where he worked, he builds up his own education, through which he
ends up his master, leaving the family behind. Serveral times does Balram
become an outcast, for example leaving his family, stepping out of the circle,
or moving out his village, not becoming a rickshaw puller, but a driver. Mainly
and most importantly coming into the light was his way out of the circle. Being
an entrepreneur, having too much money, causing corruption, leading an own
company, the life of Balram now.
Every
story has its climax. I’m a social entrepreneur or inside the tunnel of the
past. Every individual character can create tension in a novel that provokes or
moves. The White Tiger has shown what it takes to break out of the solidarity
while in the Assault Anton’s consciences with fate have shown that even
avoiding something, here the past, it will eventually catch you. He has moved
out of solidarity in a provoking way but eventually the author gave him back a
normal life, and fixing the last puzzle, which could have been solved years
ago, but without it Anton would still have been in a paradoxical situation.
Balram lives a life without regret, because he thinks that he just continues
the life of his master. That it is his responsibility, giving the impression
that his life wasn’t worth it. Moving or provocation?
