Here is my thesis and introduction. I need help with my first paragraph, and I must talk about how Balram believes he is living like a man. I also...

You have a good start here but need to unpack the concept of living "like a man" in greater detail later in the paper and focus the first paragraph more on how you will support your thesis in the rest of the paper. A first paragraph needs to function as what rhetoricians call a "metadiscourse", namely talking about the paper itself rather than the subject of the paper, which provides a map for the reader.

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You have a good start here but need to unpack the concept of living "like a man" in greater detail later in the paper and focus the first paragraph more on how you will support your thesis in the rest of the paper. A first paragraph needs to function as what rhetoricians call a "metadiscourse", namely talking about the paper itself rather than the subject of the paper, which provides a map for the reader.

Your central thesis is that although Balram aims to live the life of a free man, he fails to do so because his understanding of the concept is limited by both his own narrow intellectual horizons and his moral failings. He understands freedom primarily as freedom from servitude and financial necessity. Although he has a vision of what he wants to be freed from, he does not have a grasp of what he should do with that freedom. In other words, he sees freedom as "from" something but not "to" something. 

You should conclude your first paragraph with a discussion of what major themes you will cover in the rest of the paper, and you should announce the order in which you will cover them and the types of evidence you will offer. I would recommend choosing the following:

• Balram and Ashok, like India itself, see freedom as escape from colonial oppression. Ashok's escape is to become Americanized and Balram's escape lies in becoming a master. Just as India casts off the British yoke only to become a slave of corrupt politicians—represented by the "Great Socialist"—so too do Balram and Ashok never really escape the system of oppression in a way that enables them to make free moral choices. Instead of living freely, Balram is mentally trapped in a need for retribution.


• Both Ashok and Balram mistake freedom from social constraint, material want, and other forms of oppression for true freedom. The author thinks that true freedom is mental instead, pointing out that "The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave. To hell with the Naxals and their guns shipped from China. If you taught every poor boy how to paint, that would be the end of the rich in India.” 


• Another important point about the nature of freedom is that it is grounded in knowledge. The external circumstances of freedom are not as important as the knowledge of how to live freely. Thus, the author repeatedly talks about the importance of books and learning: "Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling." 


• Finally, as you point out, Balram's crimes themselves enslave him even more than poverty or Ashok did, constraining his freedom of action and his mind and emotions. The way in which we become trapped by our own bad, moral choices is a major theme of the book, along with the notion that lack of education, corruption, and inequality causes Indians to be unable to live freely as men. This sentiment is proven by these lines: "A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent—as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way—to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man's hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.”