The Tiger Flu

The book’s front matter includes an epigraph from “The Tyger,” a poem by the English metaphysical poet William Blake:

Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Contemplating the image of a tiger, the speaker wonders at the “immortal hand or eye,” in other words, the spiritual or transcendent power that can “frame,” or contain, the tiger’s power. The epigraph is an interesting opening to a novel that explores how plague, environmental havoc, and human greed have decimated and restructured the world in this dystopia. Illness and greed remain unchecked and uncontained, despite the characters’ efforts to contain or restrain them.

This idea of unfettered illness spawned by greed is embodied by the tiger flu, a global pandemic that has devastated the world prior to the events of the novel. In Chapter 32, K2 explains to Kora how Jemini (their grandfather’s company) bred Caspian tigers to create tiger wine even though the Ko family knew it was making people sick. Later in Chapter 32, K2’s own greed motivates him to kill Marcus Traskin, so that he can control the tiger farms and collect the profit for himself.