Tears of A Tiger

Outside Reading

" But I'll always love you, and I'll always miss you, and I'll never forget that it's okay to put dragons in the jungle and tears on a tiger." Draper, 180

I'm not exactly sure that this is a book for kids...But, in my defense I have to say that I didn't exactly think that The Giver was appropriate for young children. The Hobbit is a little mature for a younger child as well. Anyway, I definitley wouldn't let a six year old read it, but I'd consider letting an eight year old read this book. On the website, it says it's for teens but when then again, children's liteature has gotten darker. Still though, like I said, I would be really leery of letting a young child read this. To explain, it deals with several really big issues, such as drinking and driving and suicide.

In the book, Andy and his friends decide to celebrate the win of a basketball game by drinking beer. Andy the driver partakes in the fun, and drinks too... Bad idea. The car crashed and his best friend dies... To put it lightly, Andy has a hard time dealing with the situation and an even harder time forgiving himself. As time goes by, he becomes more and more withdrawn until he withdraws himself completley and kills himself.

He leaves his friends and family behind to deal with the grief... His mother cries, apparentley that's all she does. His ex-girlfriend doesn't want to believe that it's true; she's in denial. His friendsare at mad at him, as can be imagined. I guess what I'm trying to say is that everyone deals with the situation differently... And this to me is the most realisitic thing in the book. People deal with grief differently.

It was Andy's inablity to grieve effectively that caused him to suffer most. He wasn't real with other, he lied. Because he lied, others were unable to help him. I know that it probably sounds strange that I could argue that someone can grieve ineffectivley but I think that this would be a good example. To be honest, I never really thought about that until now.

What I have thought about is survivor's guilt... I'd never heard about it until this semester. My ENGL 345 class has a focus on horror and post-millenal tensions. 9/11 is a common topic that people write on. Most of the time there is a character in the story who feels guilty because he/she lived and their loved one did not. It seems to me that this is how Andy feels. Time and time again, in this book, Andy remarks that it should have been him instead.

Anyway, this made for a good story, and was just as good the second time I read as the first time. I read this a long time ago, and remember liking it. I only a few complaints, but they're more about the syntax and the dialogue than the actual prose. For instance I don't like that dashes replace quotation marks when dialogue is written. I've never really seen that done, and I can honestly say that I don't like that. What I do like is that it's kind of like a piece of mixed-media art. It's not straight prose. It starts off with a newspaper article and ends with "Monty's Goodbye to Andy." It makes for a more interesting piece and a more dynamic one at that.

So, I think that's about it for now... I gotta run.

-Amanda