Tiger Mending

After I was finished with reading the story Tiger Mending, I felt a lot like the narrator did. The narrator said that they were left with an unsettled feeling. That is sort of how I felt at the end of the story. I tend to feel unsettled after readings where there are numerous questions in my mind that were left unanswered. I suppose I could speculate, and try and answer my own questions, but I’m just the sort of person that likes hard facts. So I don’t feel entirely fulfilled by answering my questions through a mere speculation. The two sisters seemed to have very different personalities, and different qualities and strengths, but they seemed to work well with each other, especially in coping with life after their parents’ death. Throughout the story, I also was wondering what had put the tigers in that condition, and what was it that made their work so secretive. Then when I saw they were helping those poor tigers, it made me wonder all the more why their work had to be so secretive, if they were doing a good work. I guess I’m just curious in that way. So I then continued reading in anticipation, wanting to find out the cause of this strange problem. The outcome was interesting, because once one of the sisters did find out the cause of the problem, it made one sister feel better about it, and the other left for home. I think that the narrator felt it be a waste of time, to continue on that way, trying to fix a problem that would never seem to end, but why she left her sister, whom she seemed to care about so much, puzzled me. And I wondered what made the other sister stay, because she was the first to voice that she wanted to know the cause of the condition of the tigers. Maybe she was just content in having her curiosity filled, not really caring whether it was right or wrong.
I didn’t have to think for too long to figure out what tiger stripes meant to me. I’m a big fan of nature and zoology, and I really can’t get enough of National Geographic and The Discovery Channel. My mind was taken to tigers living in their natural habitat. In the wild, tiger’s use their stripes for camaflouge , to keep them hidden from their prey, which helps them be the powerful hunters that they are. The stripes also keep them hidden from hunters and the like. Another interesting thing to note about tiger’s stripes is that it is one of the things which keeps them different from each other. No two tiger’s have the exact same pattern of stripes. So to put in plainly, individuality. When looking at it in an allegorical sense, I can’t help but to parallel this meaning of tiger stripes to life and society. To be completely honest, I’m not exactly sure what the message was that Bender was giving in the tiger stripes themselves. I think that one meaning could be that in many cases people can’t really blame others for the way things are, for there are many instances when we are the causes, or play a big role in the problems that we have in our own lives.
In the beginning I was enjoying the story, but I really wasn’t satisfied with the ending. I wish it had gone more into the personal feelings of both of the girls once the cause was discovered.