Tiger

It's in the title… It's the final chapter… It's in Monty's drawing. What's that? Tigers, of course. And since they show up all over the place, well, you just know they're important in this book. Rawr.

We first hear about a tiger in Andy's conversation with his little brother, Monty. In school, Monty draws a picture of a tiger crying, and when his teacher asks him about it, he "told her he was very sad. Like you get sometime" (28.20). The tiger, then, is a symbol for Andy. So much so, in fact, that we discuss this in depth in Andy's analysis over in the "Characters" section. To dig deep, be sure to check that out. The short story here, though, is this: Tigers are mighty, but in the zoo they're caged, and Andy is mighty, but now he's trapped by his guilt.

The tiger doesn't just represent Andy, though; it also represents his whole school. Why's that? Because his high school mascot is the Hazelwood Tigers. When Robbie dies (and later when Andy kills himself), the entire school is sad—there are tears on all of the tigers.

Later, we hear Monty talk about the tiger again when he visits his brother's grave and says: "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" (45.5). Here, then, we see Monty understanding that sadness and weakness are not the same thing—that mightiness and strength can coexist with sadness. It's a hopeful thing to see since Andy's just failed to find the strength to carry himself through his own grief.

Looked at collectively, then, we can understand tigers as representing humans and our capacity to heal. Andy's high school grieves and rallies together to move forward, and so, too, does Monty. Andy's the only tiger who never finds a way out of his cage of sadness.