Close Analysis Questions
YR 12 ENGLISH – THE WHITE TIGER
Close Textual Analysis
The following questions will be completed for homework over the course of the next two weeks. You are to provide detailed answers to each of the questions, using full sentences and quotes where possible.
Passage one – Due
The First Night: pp. 16–18
This passage describes the death and funeral of Balram’s mother. It is one of the most dramatic moments in the novel and is described in a language that captures its terror and lasting significance for the young Balram:
My mother’s body had been wrapped from head to toe in a saffron silk cloth, which was covered in rose petals and jasmine garlands…(Her death was so grand that I knew, all at once, that her life must have been miserable. My family was guilty about something) (p. 16).
As he follows the procession to the river, Balram experiences a profound moment of understanding. He sees the relations of power and subordination that exist within his own family and the abject position that had been occupied by his mother. The pageantry of the funeral procession, however, is continually undercut by the horror of the scene and the details that have clearly marked the memory of the narrator: ‘I smelled the river before I saw it: a stench of decaying flesh rising from my right.’ What follows can only be described as a vision of hell. The child witnesses multiple funeral pyres, ‘four bodies were burning on the ghat when we got there’, summoning an infernal vision that contradicts the celebratory religious ceremony of prayer chants, ‘Shiva’s name is the truth!’ The connection established between religion and terror is firmly evoked in the memory, ‘Then the priest set my mother on fire’. Balram attempts to resist the overpowering control of the religious ceremony and maintain some form of connection with his mother, refusing to believe that this really is the last time he will see her. The holy site of the River Ganga is described in monstrous terms, as a ‘giant
Close Textual Analysis
The following questions will be completed for homework over the course of the next two weeks. You are to provide detailed answers to each of the questions, using full sentences and quotes where possible.
Passage one – Due
The First Night: pp. 16–18
This passage describes the death and funeral of Balram’s mother. It is one of the most dramatic moments in the novel and is described in a language that captures its terror and lasting significance for the young Balram:
My mother’s body had been wrapped from head to toe in a saffron silk cloth, which was covered in rose petals and jasmine garlands…(Her death was so grand that I knew, all at once, that her life must have been miserable. My family was guilty about something) (p. 16).
As he follows the procession to the river, Balram experiences a profound moment of understanding. He sees the relations of power and subordination that exist within his own family and the abject position that had been occupied by his mother. The pageantry of the funeral procession, however, is continually undercut by the horror of the scene and the details that have clearly marked the memory of the narrator: ‘I smelled the river before I saw it: a stench of decaying flesh rising from my right.’ What follows can only be described as a vision of hell. The child witnesses multiple funeral pyres, ‘four bodies were burning on the ghat when we got there’, summoning an infernal vision that contradicts the celebratory religious ceremony of prayer chants, ‘Shiva’s name is the truth!’ The connection established between religion and terror is firmly evoked in the memory, ‘Then the priest set my mother on fire’. Balram attempts to resist the overpowering control of the religious ceremony and maintain some form of connection with his mother, refusing to believe that this really is the last time he will see her. The holy site of the River Ganga is described in monstrous terms, as a ‘giant