Inner Feline Demons: Wolfe's "The Child by Tiger" Anonymous 10th Grade

Muscles tensed, nostrils flared, the beautiful feline creature eyes its soon-to-be prey, a harmless antelope drinking from the watering hole. Without a moment of hesitation, the black and orange striped tiger breaks out into a full stride and pounces on its victim, tearing the defenseless antelope to bloody shreds with its razor sharp teeth, and powerful bone crushing bite. This tiger, resting at the top of the animal food chain, is a seasoned predator. Thomas Wolfe’s “The Child by Tiger,” set in the Deep South in the early 1930s, addresses the predatory nature of mankind, contemplating the existence of an inner “tiger” in all men and women. The story begins with the narrator reflecting on African American Dick Prosser’s rampage, twenty-five years after the event occurs. The story reveals, through the exemplary case of Dick, that hostile social environments can ignorantly drive men and women to commit unfathomable crimes that unleash their inner “tigers.”

Dick faces constant adversity due to his racist social environment, which slowly causes his inner tiger to surface. A motif of “darkness” appears in the last paragraph (Wolfe 657). Indeed, this motif reveals that Dick has always had a dark passenger, or an inner tiger. Dick, a...