Analysis Of Tiger Coexistence In John Vaillant's 'The Tiger'
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In John Vaillant's The Tiger, the reader sees a region terrorized by a man-eating tiger until an organization known as Inspection Tiger goes into the region and puts the beast down. However, the real story of The Tiger isn't revealed until the tiger has been killed and all of the characters have gone their separate ways. This is the point in the story where the reader sees how all of the characters have changed through their experiences in the last several months. Similar to myself, Yuri Trush's opinion on human-tiger coexistence has been changed through his interaction with other characters and the tiger, while others stay unmoved like the land they live on. Through Yuri Trush's experience with the tiger and the towns people, his opinion…show more content… Thrush who was trained in the military to shoot and be devastating at hand to hand combat, is first pictured to be an unstoppable killing machine. At the end of the book we see how Trush is more than just an brute of a man, but a complex character with emotions and concerns. After Markov was first killed, Trush remembered an encounter with a hunter by the name of Lev Khomenko. Khomenko had a gun that was registered under his father's name which was illegal. Instead of taking the gun, Trush shook it off and let the man keep the gun. Lev eventually went hunting for a tiger which led to his demise. When Trush went to Lev's impoverish home to give his family the news all he said was, "I was overwhelmed...My eyes filled with tears. At that moment, when I saw their circumstances, I felt sorry for the man, not the tiger"(52). This shows how Trush truly has feelings going on inside him, and even though Lev had been trying to commit an illegal act by killing this tiger, he still found deep sympathy for his family. Later on in the story Trush had another opportunity to take a hunter's weapon away with Andrei Pochepnya. Trush decided against it yet again which led to Andrei's eventual demise to the tiger. This death "upset him deeply"(220) and he "must work