The Tiger Rising

Willie May suggests that most people are in some kind of cage, trapped there by various life events, unable to free themselves from their situations. She tells Rob, “Who don’t know something in a cage?” (66), but the price of freedom can be profound: Cricket and the tiger pay with their lives.

Willie May admits that she has been angry most of her life (82). She is in a job nobody wants—she is “the only fool Beauchamp can pay to do it” (36). While we don’t learn about Willie May’s background, except for the story about Cricket, we sense she has had a hard life. As a child, she was beaten by her father for releasing Cricket, didn’t finish school, is full of anger, and now works at a dead-end job. Her long, distant gaze (66), suggests that Willie May feels trapped.

Rob’s father is also caged. He is stuck working for Beauchamp, a wealthy coward, “for less than nothing” (86). Beauchamp threatens Rob’s father’s self-respect and manhood. Beauchamp flaunts his possessions and power, making Rob’s father declare, “There ain’t enough hours in the day to do everything that man wants done” (27). Rob’s father wishes he could “teach him a lesson” (86) but knows he needs the job. Rob’s father is released from his emotional cage when he shoots the tiger: He knows he might lose his job over it, but he regains his relationship with his son and reconnects with his emotions.

Rob keeps his grief and memories confined in his locked mental suitcase: his cage. Sistine’s friendship loosens the lock, and Rob’s memories “slip out” (60). Sistine rattles the tiger’s cage “as if she were the one that was locked up” (79). She is imprisoned by her anger. Allowing their emotions to rise up and out is painful but cathartic.

DiCamillo utilizes the opposing motifs of good and bad weather to support the theme of repressed and released emotions. Rainy, cloudy, and foggy weather prevails through most of the novel. This grayness reflects Rob’s isolation and damped-down emotions. Rob prefers the rain, thinking, “He didn’t care if the whole state did turn into a swamp” (33), because sunshine reminds him of his mother’s funeral and threatens to release memories from his suitcase. As long as it keeps raining, Rob thinks he can avoid his grief.

Rob associates his mother with happiness and light. When she was alive, the “world had seemed full of light” (56), like white Christmas lights and sunlight shining through the leaves of an oak tree. Now that she is gone, Rob’s life is dim. Outside it is cloudy, and their motel room is lit by the “gray light of the TV” (56). When Rob does allow himself to think of happier times, it makes him hurt more and makes the present “darkness darker” (56). The only pops of color in Rob’s life are Sistine’s vivid party dresses, the tiger, Cricket, and the Kentucky Star sign. All these objects feature in Rob’s imagination and dreams, working to draw him out of his self-imposed isolation.

It rains while Rob and his father dig the tiger’s grave and while they pay their respects, but the sun returns as Rob is filling in the hole. The sun clears away clouds and denial. Rob can finally express his feelings and is “lighter” inside (117). The novel ends on an uncharacteristically sunny day: Rob’s father tells him, “There ain’t a cloud in the sky” (121). The sunny ending shows how far Rob progressed from the start of the book: His self-awareness has increased and so has his confidence in his relationships.

The Kentucky Star Motel sign, a “yellow neon star that rose and fell over a piece of blue neon in the shape of the state of Kentucky” (1), represents Rob’s rising and falling hopes. DiCamillo bookends the novel with a description of the sign. At the beginning, the sign is one of the only bright spots in the landscape: Brightness is a positive motif, aligned with the tiger and Rob’s mother. Rob associates the sign with good luck. He thinks the sign is “like having his own personal shooting star, but he didn’t ever make a wish on it” (31). Rob does not wish, because he does not want to be disappointed: He buries his “not-wishes” in his suitcase (31). However, Rob can’t help but hope that Sistine will be a friend. After Sistine admires his carvings, Rob looks at the Kentucky Star sign and feels “hope and need and fear course through him in a hot neon arc” (45). When Rob denies that hope, telling the Kentucky Star, “Naw” (45), he closes his suitcase, and, notably, aggravates his rash. By the end of the novel, the Kentucky Star sign is “small” (121), and its light is no competition for the bright sunlight which reflects Rob’s newfound emotional freedom and a fresh start.