Best Nonrequired Reading & Lesson Ideas

The Tiger’s Wife begins in 1941 as the Germans are bombing a city. A lone tiger escapes a local zoo and begins a trek for survival. The big themes are war, bravery, death, identity, and the intersection of superstition. The narrator relates events in the early years of his/her grandfather’s life. Described like a local myth or folktale, the characters and scenes move back and forth between fact and fantasy.

Lesson Plan for High School Students

Big Ideas:

War

Essential Questions: How does war change people? Are society’s rules suddenly different? Imagine the big picture (war) and move the camera in to view the small-scale, everyday “wars” between neighbors, friends, and family. Are the answers to the questions above the same?

Focus areas: Discuss the significance of bombs through the eyes of the tiger, body parts in trees, desensitization.

Bravery

Essential Questions: What does it mean to be brave? What do gender roles have to say about bravery?

Focus areas: Discuss the bravery of the tiger, the deaf-mute girl, the blacksmith, and the villagers.

Death

Essential Questions: Do life and death have the same value in times of war? Why? How do you know? What does this story say about death? How? Why?

Focus Areas: How is death viewed by the grandfather, the deaf-mute girl, Luka, the tiger?

Identity

Essential Questions: Who or what is the tiger? Who is the tiger’s wife? Who is the narrator?

Focus areas: Who killed Luka? What happened to the tiger?

Intersection of Superstition/Mythology/Spirituality

Essential Questions: Is the tiger real? Are Luka and the deaf-mute girl real? Is the story real?

What larger roles do these characters play in the story?

Part 2. Ties to Macbeth

War

Essential Questions: What is acceptable in times of war? Narrow the focus of war to the level of kings, families, neighbors, and friends. Who are the victims in both stories?

Bravery

How does Lady Macbeth use ideas of bravery, masculinity, and gender roles to influence Macbeth? What similarities do you see in the blacksmith?

Death

How is death viewed in Macbeth? Is death real or imaginary? Is death more real in The Tiger’s Wife?

Focus areas: apparitions

Identity

Who or what are the witches? What else could they represent? Are the ghosts/apparitions real? How do you know? Compare the witches to the tiger.

Superstition

What role do the witches play? How do they advance the story? What can they tell us about the people of the time period? How is the “tiger’s wife” like the witches? How are the stories similar?

Activities: (Break into groups of three)

Part 1: Each group will construct a short story containing a combination of any two of the themes above. It can be a complete work of fiction or a transformation of an existing story.

Part 2: Each group will come up with a symbolic rendering (art, poetry, mixed-media, video, music, or visual representation) of their story.

Part 3: (Individual)

Each person will choose one theme (war, bravery/gender roles, death, identity, or superstition/mythology/spirituality), and write a brief essay about how it has touched his/her life.