44 pages • 1 hour read
Tea ObrehtThe Tiger's Wife
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Natalia Stefanović
Natalia narrates most of the novel, excepting the deathless man stories that she allows her grandfather to tell in his own voice. She imagines portions of several chapters as her grandfather’s childhood tiger, and it is her voice that pieces together the tale of the tiger’s wife. She is brave, bold, and caring, crossing borders into a hostile country to treat orphans. Though her age is never directly mentioned, at the beginning of the novel as she is driving to Brejevina, she has completed her training as a doctor and is probably in her mid-twenties. She is a few years older at the end of the novel.
A doctor, she wears her white coat constantly, both a protection and a shield during the unsettled, post-wartimes in which she travels across. She also wears her coat in emulation of her grandfather, who also wore his white coat at strategic times—such as when rescuing her from the customs authorities. She hopes the coat, the badge of a doctor, will lend her its prestige and protection.
Though the reader experiences the novel through Natalia’s eyes, Obreht gives little dimension to Natalia herself; she is the voice of the novel, but not its center. Though her relationship with her grandfather is described in detail, her relationship to her grandmother and her mother are mere shadows of that other relationship. Her friendship with Zóra receives more attention, but is still cursory when compared to her relationship with the grandfather. Natalia’s father is never mentioned in the novel.
Natalia keeps her grandfather’s secrets, particularly helping him during his cancer treatments. She never considers telling her grandmother about his illness. She honors her grandfather, saying, “I had been taught long ago that there are some stories you keep to yourself” (332).She clearly finds his death a form of betrayal and undergoes a difficult process, including a journey to Galina and interviews with the villagers, to find acceptance. She cannot become an adult herself until she accepts and understands the secrets of her grandfather’s life, as well as his death.
When Natalia follows the clues her grandfather left her, she finds both the truth and a legend. She discovers that the tiger’s wife, the tiger, Luka the butcher, Gaiša the Bear, and the apothecary were all real, not fairy tales. Though they have become legends, Natalia also manages to imbue the story with the sense that these were real people. She takes up the mantle of the storyteller, recreating the final story her grandfather has to tell her.
Natalia’s Grandfather
Orphaned at a young age, the grandfather is raised in the village of Galina by his grandmother, Mother Vera. He is the center of the novel and its most important character. Obreht reserves the strongest and most unique voice in the novel for the grandfather. His personality—funny, irreverent, direct, and compassionate—comes through distinctly in the deathless man stories.
The winter of his ninth year becomes a central, character-defining chapter of his life. Within 24 hours, he accidentally shoots Dariša the Bear in the face, killing him, and he unknowingly gives the tiger’s wife the apothecary’s potion, which kills her. Though not directly responsible for either death, these deaths, along with the public hanging of the apothecary only a few weeks later, haunt him. The grandfather goes on to redeem himself, living a respected life as a surgeon and healer, and as a beloved husband, father and grandfather.
He carries The Jungle Book—a gift from the apothecary—in remembrance of his childhood in Galina, the apothecary, the tiger, and the tiger’s wife. Together, the apothecary and the tiger’s wife made him into the man he becomes.
As a man of science and learning, from the outside world, the apothecary demonstrates that there is a world outside the isolated village, Galina. The grandfather is drawn to him for his scientific knowledge as well as his orderly shop, the rituals of preparing the medicines, and the authoritative calm that he brings to the confusion and chaos of life. The Apothecary stands as a powerful antidote to the fearful, superstitious gossip of the villagers.
The amazing appearance of the tiger and his relationship with the tiger’s wife show the grandfather that the mystical and fabulous can co-exist with reality.
The grandfather becomes a man of science who respects the power of storytelling and the influence of the mystical in his life. Strikingly, he does not give his autobiography in a traditional form, simply recounting his life’s events to his granddaughter. Instead, he tells her stories, acknowledging that science and rationality are not the only important elements of life.
Gavran Gailé, the Deathless Man
Gavran Gailé, the deathless man, figures prominently in the grandfather’s life, though only the grandfather sees or talks to him. Death’s nephew, Gavran began his professional life as a physician. He worked in harmony with his uncle, using Death’s gift—a magical cup—to save the lives of those he could and acknowledging his defeat when death was fated. Love was his downfall.
Symbolically, the deathless man story ties directly to the tiger’s wife story through Gavran’s great love, Amana. He attempts to cheat death, and Death curses him with immortality. He lives in the hope that one day Death will forgive him and allow him to die. Until then, he continues doing the work that he is meant to do, cheerfully and without complaint, even when he is drowned, shot, or thrown into a drunk tank for his trouble.
By having the two stories intersect through people the grandfather knew in Galina, Obreht gives the deathless man’s story an air of reality. If all the characters in the tiger’s wife are real, then perhaps the deathless man is real too. After all, Natalia believes that she might run into him at any moment.
The deathless man teaches the grandfather that death is not a punishment, through the curse that deprives the deathless man of death. Another significant lesson that the deathless man teaches is that death remains every man’s fate, but how each man lives is up to him. Building from what the grandfather learns about death from the deathless man, he determines that a person can live in hope or live in fear. In making that single choice, a person determines a whole approach to life, as well as death. The grandfather repeatedly chooses to live in hope.
The Tiger’s Wife
Unlike the deathless man, the tiger’s wife is known to be a real person: Luka the butcher’s wife. Her character easily takes on fairy tale qualities because no one, not even her husband, knows her name. Kind, industrious, and hardworking, the tiger’s wife tries to make a life with Luka.
Though she is a real person, many mysteries surround her. For example, no one knows, including the reader, who the father of her baby is. Luka is unlikely to be the father, as he says he had not slept with her for months before his disappearance. Similarly, no one in the village knows what happened to Luka, and no further clues are revealed to the reader.
It is striking that the tiger’s wife is the one who makes it possible for her sister, Amana, to run away with the deathless man. She carries the message to him and advises Amana in what to do. A child bride, she is only thirteen years old when her father marries her off to Luka. The reader knows she has been living in the village for two Christmases before Luka disappears. She is sixteen when she dies.
Luka the Butcher
Though Natalia’s inclusion of Luka’s story indicates that the reader might have some compassion and understanding for his plight, none of the villagers do. The villagers also find fault with his wife, as an outsider, a Muslim, and a deaf-mute. Though Luka is clearly sensitive and musically talented, he undeniably takes out his frustrations on his wife by brutally beating her. The Apothecary describes Luka as “a brute without being a fool, an inexcusable combination” (315). Luka understands that he is treating her unfairly and cruelly, but he cannot stop. No one in the village likes or respects him, but no one tries to intervene and help her, either. When he disappears, no one cares about his death.
Luka’s story is testament to the brutal exclusionary tactics of Galina village life. Those who are different can be completely excluded, or worse, driven out. The village also suspects that Luka is gay long before he leaves the village for the city, and his bringing home an extremely young, deaf-mute Muslim wife is more proof of his depravity, not less. A deaf-mute wife can tell no one what she knows about her husband. Though the village does not accept his wife, he makes no effort to help her fit in, nor does he make an effort on his own behalf to fit into village life.
Gaiša the Bear
In the legend that grew up around his death, Gaiša takes on bear form and fights the tiger to the death. In this way, the villagers explain the death and disappearance of a great hunter. Only his bloody bear pelt remained as evidence of his passing.
Born into a wealthy family, Gaiša was responsible for his ailing older sister from a young age. He found escape, life purpose, and a way to defeat death, in the orderly process of taxidermy. Gaiša became a great hunter in order to pursue his real passion, the reconstruction of lifelike animal trophies.
A kind man who reveres women, he is convinced against his better judgment to pursue the tiger. He soon discovers that the woman he thought he was protecting, the tiger’s wife, is somehow sabotaging his traps. He catches her in the act and attacks her. The grandfather, at the time a young boy, strikes out at him to protect her, accidentally killing Gaiša
Gaiša’s story, told to Natalia when she visits Galina, clearly ties into the tiger’s wife story. Gaiša’s story also reveals a further motivation for the grandfather to become a doctor, a role he takes on perhaps in atonement for this inadvertent killing.
The Apothecary
The apothecary’s death remains the most ironically charged in the novel. He is hung by the Nazis as an example during the purge of all educated and authoritative leaders in the villages. In reality, though the apothecary has recently saved the village from their hideous fears by killing the tiger’s wife, he retains no moral authority by the time the Nazis arrive.
A man of science and rationality, the apothecary’s healing practices and scientific principals oppose the superstition and fear of the villagers. By the time of the tiger’s wife arrives, however, he no longer has much power to oppose or persuade the villagers, though he clearly stands against superstition and fights it where he can. He begins to lose his authority and the trust of the villagers when an epidemic kills six children in the village, leaving the grandfather as the only child under the age of twelve.
He protects the tiger’s wife and her unborn child by killing her. He takes the responsibility for it, though the whole village wanted her death. He fails, however, to regain the village’s trust through this act, though he protects the village from the tiger’s wife’s “magic.” In the end, the superstitious villagers do not trust him because they remember that he is an outsider.
Natalia gives us the details of the apothecary’s life because he is the reason that the grandfather is a doctor. The apothecary also gave the grandfather The Jungle Book. In this novel, science is the enemy of superstition and ignorance. Significantly, the apothecary gave the grandfather a storybook, not a science book. In doing so, the Apothecary teaches the grandfather that stories, like that of the tiger, Shere Khan, are just as important as science.
