Eat—or Get Eaten Up: A Study of Power in George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger

Abstract

[Abstract] The core objective of this essay is the application of Louis Althusser’s theory of the state structures or apparatus to the case studies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. I start from the premise that applying these critical tools allows me to explore power and its expression in the shape of state structures in these two literary works. In turn, this will also lead to determine the applicability and limitations of this thesis with respect to Animal Farm and The White Tiger. To achieve that purpose, an eclectic approach that can be defined as “text-leading Marxism,” whose similarity in many aspects with cultural materialism will also be elucidated, is employed here. Since power relations within each novel will be studied in combination with non-literary realities, an approach which joins them seems appropriate. However poststructuralist this textual centrality is, the importance of contexts in relation to my interpretation of Animal Farm and The White Tiger enables me to regard this essay as Marxist-oriented too. As far as conclusions are concerned, I argue that my main findings boil down to the crisscross inversion of elements resulting of chiasmus-like transformations. These reveal, in the first place, the unfixed limits and the continuous spectral nature of apparatus rather than the purely structuralist view of such categories as separated, well-defined points. Secondly, I argue that these inverted relationships may resonate with cross-like metamorphoses existent in the real world. Finally, I offer the reading of Animal Farm and The White Tiger as precautionary novels. This interpretation is fundamentally originated by the satirical nature of the two narratives and by the aforementioned presence of such chiasmic reversals which seem to echo those from extra-literary reality. With regard to the structure, the project is organised into four significant parts: in the introduction, I will state the aims, the methodology employed and the suitability of the chosen corpus. This initial section will be followed by the first chapter, which will examine the theoretical premises and the background required to tackle the case studies effectively. This chapter deals with the key theoretical concepts and provides information relative to the actual context of creation of both works—the first examples of crisscross transformations appearing here. The empirical study of state structures proper will be developed in the third part: first concerning Orwell’s Animal Farm, then Adiga’s The White Tiger. In this chapter, I will comment upon more evidence of chiasmic inversions. The fourth and final division of the project corresponds to the conclusions drawn from the earlier analysis, namely the precautionary reading of the literary pieces as well as the significance attributed to the chiasmic alterations.