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"Nietzschean Overtones in Adiga’s The White Tiger: A Critique"


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Category
Articles
Publisher
Ijcrt
Publishing Date
01-Apr-2022
volume
Volume-10
Issue
Issue-4
Pages
pp 372-376
  • Abstract

The awakening of new master morality consciousness in a modern slave is the beginning of subaltern assertion in all walks of mainstream society in India. This new realization provides a level playing field to subalterns, which shows how their tit-for-tat spirit helps them to actualize their dream of becoming a master in society. To become a master of his own destiny, Arvind Adiga’s protagonist uses a Nietzschean “will to power” approach. In Adiga’s novel, The White Tiger (2008), it could be found that the hegemonic social structure always helps masters to control and maintain their exploitative social setup, Adiga calls it - “the rooster coop”, in which all subservient slaves are trapped. This trap allows masters to implicate extreme pain in the lives of the oppressed and use their slaves as objects. The rise of a new master from such a coop is only possible if the effects of slave morality in the oppressed decline and they develop the will-to-power spirit in their lives. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is a German iconoclast who shook the traditional conformist thinking with his popular statement- “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him” to make a way to develop the full potential of a human being through his concept of “Overman” and the “Will to Power”. The overtones of Nietzsche’s concept of “Overman” and “the Will to Power” could be traced in the life journey of Adiga’s protagonist Balram Halwai and his rise from rags to riches. The paper examines the implications of Nietzschean moralistic ideas in Adiga’s novel and presents the new avatar of Nietzsche’s Overman in Balram Halwai and in his aspiration to become a successful entrepreneur.

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