The mood of “Mrs. Packletide’s Tiger” is lighthearted and entertaining. While Saki offers genuine social commentary on the ways that Edwardian upper-class people harm colonized people and each other, he does so using a funny and ironic narrative. The following passage captures how, even in the most “dramatic” moment of the story, the mood remains lighthearted:
It was Louisa Mebbin who drew attention to the fact that the goat was in death-throes from a mortal bullet-wound, while no trace of the rifle’s deadly work could be found on the tiger. Evidently the wrong animal had been hit, and the beast of prey had succumbed to heart-failure, caused by the sudden report of the rifle, accelerated by senile decay. Mrs Packletide was pardonably annoyed at the discovery; but, at any rate, she was the possessor of a dead tiger, and the villagers, anxious for their thousand rupees, gladly connived at the fiction that she had shot the beast.
Despite the fact that this scene contains one animal “in death-throes from a mortal bullet-wound” and another animal dead from a heart attack, there is no moment of mourning or sorrow. Instead, Saki turns this into an amusing moment in which readers witness Mrs. Packletide’s complete lack of hunting prowess—not only did she not stalk the animal out in the wild, but, even when the old, sick tiger was easily within her reach, she shot the goat instead. The tiger did end up dying, but from “heart-failure caused by the sudden report of the rifle, accelerated by senile decay.” The final mention of “senile decay” humorously highlights just how little Mrs. Packletide had to do with the animal’s demise.
