Tiger by A.D.Hope

 Tiger by A.D.Hope

 

A Perspective:

Sabuj Sarkar

A.D.Hope's 'Tiger' envisions of an imaginary fear, unpredictable and nonplussed, without a reason and fact in most cases before the real condition for being worried arrives. It begins with an epigraph of Miroslav Holub, poet and immunologist: "At noon the paper tigers roar." Is it the 'Post-traumatic Stress Disorder that haunts an individual all through his life for a moment of crisis which might come at any moment? The speaker echoes Holub in the opening stanza of the poem: 

"The paper tigers roar at noon;
The sun is hot, the sun is high.
They roar in chorus, not in tune,
Their plaintive, savage hunting cry."

 

Before we delve deeper into the poem, it is interesting to quote Holub as he enjoys the "uneasy relationship" between science and poetry and is always "open-minded about all the phenomena of experience, including the irrational." (1) The notion of this "irrationality" looms large as the speaker listens the roar of the paper tigers "in chorus" during the noon. It seems that the speaker is in a self-pity as he witnesses the "plaintive, savage hunting cry." The antithetical expression here is remarkable as the sound is " plaintive" as well as "savage" in nature creating as sense of self-doubt on the part of the speaker. 

 

The restlessness on the part of the speaker is well perceived. He knows the paper tiger is "harmless", yet he has no choice but to suggest that " O, when you hear them, stop your ears/ And clench your lids and bite your tongue." The condition of biting tongue indicates the possible mistake in decision making on the part of the speaker as he probably dilutes his thought very often if the paper tiger is at all the real tiger that he is afraid of so long. At the end of the second stanza the speaker makes it clear that the tentative fear is actually a creation of his heated brain and he considers himself a soft target of the paper tiger: "The harmless paper tiger bears/ Strong fascination for the young." 

The poem takes a different turn as the makes it clear gradually:

"His forest is the busy street;
His dens the forum and the mart;
He drinks no blood, he tastes no meat:
He riddles and corrupts the heart."

 

The sudden change in tone alters the dimension of the poem. From particular it becomes general. It opens up new horizon to think that the paper tiger operates its power not by force but psychologically. It is more an intellectual process to damage the whole system than to attack an individual separately to destroy the body or a part of it. It neither drinks blood, nor tastes meat. It "corrupts the heart" permanently. Corrupting the heart means destabilizing the spirit proper, dwarfing the potentiality that one possesses and to make one's heart paralysed without giving the stamina to fight back. Is it the colonial rule in Australia that A.D.Hope is hinting at? The exercise of power over the natives and forcing the aboriginals to remain silent and cornered. 

 

 The dramatic shift in the narrative happens as "the dusk begins to creep" and the readers are reminded of the famous poem of Blake's "The Tyger". As in Blake's " The Tyger", the tiger appears with all its ferociousness:

" Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" 

We find the same bloodthirstiness in A.D.Hope's tiger. The real tiger appears in the dusk. " From tree to tree, from door to door,/ The jungle tiger wakes from sleep/ And utters his authentic roar." This is the tiger that the speaker probably was waiting so long. Hope doesn't keep his readers in confusion any longer as the sign of "authenticity" is well marked here. And this is how he makes the difference between the fake and the original, the imagination and the real, the duplicate and the authentic. This tiger "bursts the night and shakes the stars." 

Almost at the end of the poem, the speaker takes the position of a man of vision and in a sage-like tone advises " My child, then put aside your fear:/ Unbar the door and walk outside !/ The real tiger waits you there;" It is quite surprising that the real tiger is not to be afraid of actually and the tiger is a symbol of the  source of inspiration and of benevolence helping one to realise the true essence of life and to dig out the power and confidence to fight against all the odds and difficulties in life and also for the nation. The "golden eyes" of the tiger are actually the guiding force for all to reach the destination.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

1.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/miroslav-holub