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Chapter 13
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Tiger Rising, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom and Consequences
Emotion, Repression, and Healing
Friendship and Support
Good, Evil, and Balance
Religion, Beauty, and Wonder
Summary
Analysis
The tiger is still pacing in his cage, which is chain-link with a board as a roof. Sistine insists the tiger is beautiful and just like the poem. She recites the first lines: “Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night.” Rob thinks the poem is beautiful, but Sistine interrupts his musings to ask why the tiger is here. Rob supposes Beauchamp owns him and perhaps likes to look at him, like Rob does. But Sistine insists that’s “selfish” and that they must free the tiger. They can saw through the locks on the cage. Rob insists the tiger doesn’t belong to them, so they can’t let him go. But Sistine insists the tiger is “[theirs] to save.”
The poem Sistine recites, “The Tyger” by William Blake, considers how God could have made something as beautiful—but also as dangerous—as the tiger. It introduces the idea that the world is full of opposites and gray areas. Rob and Sistine explore this idea further as they discuss the tiger. Rob sees the tiger’s presence as positive and beneficial: he’s pleasing to look at. But Sistine finds the tiger’s existence in a cage horrifying and ugly, a reflection of evil in the world and a sign that she and Rob cannot (and should not) stand idly by and let bad things happen.
Active
Themes
Just then, the tiger stops pacing, and Rob hears a car coming. It’s Beauchamp. Rob grabs Sistine’s hand and drags her back to the motel at a run. He feels his heart doing something funny, but he’s not sure what. Thinking of how Willie May likened him to a bird trying to fly, Rob starts to laugh. Sistine laughs too—and Rob realizes that what his heart is feeling is happiness.
