Themes In S. Rajaratnam's 'The Tiger'

Fully developed themes yet significantly shorter and less elaborated are often classified as short story, a piece of prose fiction. S.Rajaratnam, the late Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore was famous for many short stories including The Tiger.
The tiger is a story about an encounter of a pregnant lady named Fatimah with a tiger in the river. She was having a bath when she saw the tiger. Both Fatimah and the tiger did not move but merely looking into each other’s eyes. When the night began to creep over the village, Fatimah dived into the river and reached the edge of the river bank. She then ran to her home. Upon telling her encounter with the tiger to her fellow villagers including her mother, Mahmood urged the village men to hunt and kill the tiger. Fatimah’s opposition to the idea as she had sympathy for it was ignored. Later on the night, a youth told Fatimah and her mother that the tiger has been killed and they found three newborn cubs. Fatimah had a labour pain upon hearing the new. The story ended with the Fatimah’s mother instructing the youth to call the midwife.

Theme
Theme is the central idea that is discussed in a piece of writing and some writing piece may have more than one theme. The Tiger is no exceptional as there are

S. Rajaratnam used tiger as the animal in the story to highlight the extinction of tigers in Malaya. Tigers are endangered species in Malaya as they are the victims of deforestation and hunting. In the story, Fatimah argued that the tiger did not attack her even though she was vulnerable and thus the tiger should be left alone. However, the men lead by Mahmood, were determined to kill the tiger despite Fatimah’ argument. “He was all for hunting the tiger at once, simply because he loved hunting.” This serves as a proof that Mahmood hunts wild animals for pleasure and did not bother about the extinction of tigers. In addition, he also intended to sell the three newborn cubs for