Previous
Chapter 8
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
Rob’s father wakes Rob up at 5:30 in the morning. Rob gets out of bed and looks at the Kentucky Star sign, which feels like “his own personal shooting star.” But he doesn’t make a wish, as he fears he might not be able to stop wishing if he starts. Feeling a “warm glowing kind of feeling” in his belly, Rob realizes it’s because of the tiger. He joins his father outside in the rain, which he doesn’t mind. (It was sunny at his mother’s funeral, and now the sun just reminds Rob of trying not to cry that day.) Rob’s father allows Rob to have some coffee and then leads Rob to the maintenance shed. He whistles a song he used to sing with Rob’s mother, but then he abruptly stops. Rob stares into the woods, hoping to spot the tiger, until his father calls him to hurry.
Rob is, at this point, afraid to acknowledge that he wants anything good in the world. This is why he refuses to wish on the Kentucky Star sign: making the wish would mean letting his repressed dreams and memories out, which is the exact opposite of what he’s trying to do in the aftermath of his mother’s death. Still, everything seems to remind Rob of his mother, again highlighting the futility of Rob’s emotional repression. Similarly, Rob’s father seems to whistle out of habit, suggesting that he’s normally not as stoic as he is right now. Like Rob, he’s repressing his emotions and memories to try to avoid confronting his grief.
Active
Themes
