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Chapter 40
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in When You Trap a Tiger, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Inherited Stories vs. Personal Agency
Magic and Belief
Food and Connection
Grief, Loss, and Community
Summary
Analysis
Following the tiger, Sam and Lily make it to the hospital. When Lily enters the hospital room and sees Halmoni, she realizes that Halmoni looks like she’s dying. Halmoni requests to speak with Sam first, and Lily uses this as an opportunity to get away. She finds the tiger sitting in the rain and tells the tiger that she thinks the new stories have changed her. Lily shares that it’s frustrating to feel so many emotions, and the tiger assures Lily that she’s stronger than she thinks. Speaking of Halmoni, the tiger calls her “my Ae-Cha” and tells Lily that the stories she’s heard are stories of “our family.” Lily asks the tiger if she is Halmoni’s mother, and although the tiger doesn’t answer, she tells Lily to understand her history and use it to create her own story.
Although the tiger doesn’t explicitly confirm this, she suggests that she is Halmoni’s mother, who left Halmoni behind as a child in Korea and whom Halmoni has been searching for her entire life. In this way, the tiger’s existence challenges Halmoni’s assumption that she was completely abandoned by her mother. After all, it’s the tiger who has been helping Lily finally learn the stories of their family and, in turn, force Halmoni to face difficult emotions from her past (which happened when Lily confronted Halmoni and shared with her about the conversations with the tiger).
Active
Themes
