A short story known as prose fiction displays fully developed themes yet significantly shorter and less elaborate. In The Tiger, S.Rajaratnam, the late Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore conveyed two vital messages through an ingenious use of literary devices. A theme is a central idea that is discussed in a piece of writing and some writing piece may have more than one theme. The two major themes presented by S.Rajaratnam in The Tiger are motherhood and human against nature. Motherhood is the first theme discussed in The Tiger. Fatimah, the main character was a pregnant woman who was afraid that the tiger will kill her and her baby. In order to protect her child and herself, she dived into the river to reach the other edge of the river bank. …show more content…
“He was all for hunting the tiger at once, simply because he loved hunting.” This serves as a proof that Mahmood hunts wild animals for pleasure as he also intended to sell the three newborn cubs for profit. Fatimah oppose the hunting as she has sympathy towards the tiger while Mahmood did not bother about the extinction of the tigers as he shoot the harmless tiger for pleasure and profit. Literary devices are the typical structures used by writers to convey his or her message to the readers. The two major literary devices used in The Tiger to convey S, Rajaratnam’s message are suspense and imagery. Suspense is the intense feeling that an audience goes through while waiting for the outcome of certain events. (Literary Devices, 2017) Suspense basically leaves the reader holding their breath and wanting more information and the crucial information are often revealed is suspense. In The Tiger, the readers were left to wonder why the tiger did not attack Fatimah who was vulnerable since the readers were not acknowledged the fact the tiger was pregnant similar to Fatimah. This fact was only brought to light at the ending of the story where the youth shared the information of newborn tiger cubs with Fatimah and her mother. The vital information of tiger’s pregnancy was revealed in a manner of shock and sympathy by the