Search For Peace In Oliver Stone's 'Platoon'

“The first casualty of war, is innocence,” wrote Oliver Stone in his movie Platoon. This quote easily shows one of the most important themes in The Tiger’s Wife, a novel by Téa Obreht. This novel is about a woman named Natalia in an unnamed Balkan country that is mending from war. Natalia’s grandfather, her idol and role model, just passed away, leaving Natalia to search for more than just his belongings. The search for peace, closure, and the tiger’s wife, are all searches that bring struggles and life into The Tiger’s Wife. The search for the tiger’s wife is quite possibly the most important search of all, as it is an integral part of the story line. Natalia has always shown an interest in tigers, and the tiger’s wife often weaves in

One such example is the search for peace exhibited by the tiger’s wife. After being forced to marry her sister’s fiancé because of her sister’s sudden suicide, (alliteration ☺) the tiger’s wife found herself married to a man who abused her constantly. Not only this, but the tiger himself is also looking for peace. After escaping a zoo that had caught on fire, the tiger searches for some sort of solace in the rural mountain area that Natalia’s grandfather and the tiger’s wife live in. The tiger and the tiger’s wife find themselves relating to each other more than one would think: “The tiger saw the girl as she had seen him: without judgment, fear, foolishness, and somehow the two of them understood each other without exchanging a single sound” (Obreht 220). Both the tiger and the girl know that they are in bad situations, and with the bond that they start to form, they start to find the peace that they have been searching for. Natalia’s grandfather explains in another story that he had met with the tiger in the back of the meat shop that the tiger’s wife now managed. Instead of lashing out at the grandfather, the tiger only paused for a moment and then walked away; the grandfather could only remember how the beast seemed oddly