PLEASE READ!! IS THIS ESSAY WELL WRITTEN?

im only in the seventh grade, so please don't criticize this rudely. please tell me what i did wrong and what i could do to fix it.

Alyssa

Yellow

O5//O7//O9

“The Lady or the Tiger?”

In Frank R. Stockton’s short story, “The Lady, or the Tiger?”, we are left unsure and to decide for ourselves whether the lady or the tiger came out of the right door, or the tiger. But first, let’s backtrack. You see, a semi barbaric king chose to have a courtier punished after the man had an affair with the king’s daughter. The king gave the courtier a choice between two doors. Behind one door was a fierce, relentless tiger, while the other door contained of a beautiful lady in which the man would marry if he chose her door. At last, the courtier has to decide which door will be opened. Unfortunately, we are left without an answer. It’s easy to tell that he chose the door with the tiger.

It is evident that the door in which the courtier chose would contain the tiger. To begin with, the princess, who had feelings for the courtier, would want anything but the man to marry another woman. Due to this assumption, you can see that the tiger would be chosen. The princess most likely feels that if she can’t have her lover, nobody can, which makes her best bet to point to the door with the tiger. In present-day, we see many occurrences where someone who couldn’t have his lover because they chose someone else to be with, would go as far as killing their “used-to-be-lover’s” new love interest. It is pretty obvious how something like this can come to be. Jealousy can be so overpowering that it leads you to do crazy things. In this case, the princess is led by here “semi barbaric” ways to be conceited and point to the right door which, you should know by now, contains the tiger. In addition to this, the princess was noted as “semi barbaric”. Nobody really can be only partially uncivilized. The princess was either a complete barbarian or not. Also, the story states how the woman was “paler and whiter than anyone in the vast ocean of anxious faces,” which meant that she was unsure of what to do. She utterly despised the lady, so her devilish side took over and led the courtier to pick the door containing the tiger.

Also, the king himself contributes to the reasons why the lady comes out of the door. The king is also considered semi barbaric. As I previously said, one can either be a barbarian or not. The king was barbaric enough to make such an unfair trial. From this information, we already know that he is barbaric. Now that we know of his barbaric ways, there is foreshadowing that it will lead to an unhappy ending, meaning that he will choose the tiger. If the lady was chosen, it would be happy for the man and the princess and her father would continue to live uncivilized.

Between the setting and point-of-view, you can also tell why the tiger is chosen. First of all, the setting is a fairy-tale like amphitheater. There is room for dueling, music, and many other things done back in the day. Typically in this environment, the not the happiest of things happen. You get hints that the ending will be a sad one for the courtier from knowing that most likely many other cases the king held in here had a bad outcome. The point-of-view also affects the decision that is made. “The Lady or the Tiger” is told in third person omniscient point-of-view, meaning that a narrator knows all of the thoughts and actions of every character. If the story had been told in the princess’s point-of-view, we may not have had any clues as to who came out of the door. With an all-knowing narrator, there isn’t a certain focus on any one of the character’s point-of-view, instead it is all equal. If one point-of-view had been focused on more than the others, the character could’ve messed up what really happened, changing our opinions on what would come out of the door.

In conclusion, this is why the tiger came out of the door that the courtier opened.