32 pages • 1 hour read
Rajiv JosephBengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act IChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act I, Scenes 1-3 Summary
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo opens at the Baghdad Zoo, where two American soldiers are standing guard next to a caged Bengal tiger. The Tiger, who “stands like a person and speaks to the audience” (7), tells the audience about the situation at the Baghdad Zoo, where the lions already escaped and “predictably…got killed in about two hours” (7). The Tiger muses about the possibility of escaping the zoo if his cage got bombed and tells the audience “Zoo is hell” (11), revealing that he got shipped to Baghdad after “screw[ing] up” and eating someone 12 years ago.
Between the Tiger’s lines, the two American soldiers, Kev and Tom, are talking to each other, recalling their time in the Marines and making crude comments. Tom reveals a gold-plated semiautomatic pistol, telling Kev that it’s “Saddam’s kid’s gun,” stolen when the soldiers raided Hussein’s palace (9). He also says he won Saddam Hussein’s gold toilet seat in a poker game. Kev complains that he “ain’t seen shit” in the war. “Not one Iraqi did I get to kill!” (11).
Tom takes out a Slim Jim and tries to annoy the Tiger with it, sticking it in his cage. He goads the Tiger on and tells him to “get angry”; things go too far, and the Tiger bites off Tom’s hand. Kev then kills the Tiger with the gold gun. As Kev goes to get help for Tom, the Tiger, now a ghost, steps out of the cage and looks back at his body, lamenting that it will now be “over. Curtains. Ka-boom” (12).
Scene 2 takes place in an office where Musa, an Iraqi translator, is sitting and working. Kev enters and Musa asks him what “bitch” means, as he is trying to understand “casual American phrases” (14). Kev is demeaning toward Musa—he calls him “Habib” rather than calling Musa by name—and brags that he’s better because he’s an American soldier and has “seen action.” Kev tells Musa about killing the Tiger, but reveals that now “everyone’s all like…eh…stupid fucking retard, killin’ Tigers and shit. Like I did something wrong” (15). Kev then shows Musa the gold gun and tells him it belonged to Saddam’s son; when Musa holds it, he starts “shaking with rage” and “falls into a crouch” (16). Kev gets angry and calls Musa a “freak,” and Musa asks Kev to leave him alone, as the room they’re in is for translators only. Kev says he needs to be alone when he gets his gear on and then leaves the room, giving Musa a high five as he leaves.
Scene 3 takes place in an Iraqi home, where an Iraqi man is “standing with a sack tied around his head and his hands tied behind his back” (18). Kev and Musa enter, as does a woman, who rushes to the man and catches Kev and Musa off guard. Chaos ensues as the woman yells at Kev and Musa to leave them alone. Musa attempts to translate while Kev yells at the couple to “speaka Englisha” (19); Kev yells “WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU” at the man and woman while “stand[ing] above them in a threatening manner” (21). Kev asks about a box in the room and the woman says there are only blankets in there, but Kev seems suspicious, going through the box and becoming “more and more desperate” (22). Musa tells Kev he is supposed to be standing guard, and Kev replies that he is doing his job.
The Tiger’s ghost then enters the house and Kev sees him, though no one else does. Paranoid, Kev points the gold gun at the Tiger and says, “It’s not a fucking blanket. It’s him! It’s HIM!” (23). Saying he “can’t breathe,” Kev starts taking off his gear and talking to the Tiger, goading the Tiger to “bring it” before he starts sobbing and collapses.
Musa takes the gold gun from Kev, and the man and woman leave, accusing Musa of being a thief and a traitor. Kev wails, “I’m sorry” and seems to relive the Tiger’s killing, saying, “Man attacked. I shot him, Tommy. I shot him, I fucking shot him. […] I’m okay…I’m okay…” (25). Lights onstage then illuminate a garden in Baghdad, which is filled with large topiary animals that have been burned and ruined by bombs. The Tiger examines the topiary while bombs go off in the distance.
Act I, Scenes 4-6 Summary
The Tiger wanders around the topiary garden and delivers a long monologue, musing about the topiaries and the afterlife: “Nothing was very much of a surprise until I wandered into this garden here” (25). Telling the audience that Tigers are atheists, the Tiger says he finds his life after death “alarming” and asks, “Why aren’t I gone?” (26). He also reveals that he has gained knowledge and “revelations about the world” after dying, such as knowing Dante’s work (26). As he hears the Muslim call to prayer in the distance, the Tiger acknowledges that as an atheist, he “has some serious reevaluating to do,” but also questions the Iraqi’s religion. “Listen! Calling out to God in this mess. God. Can you believe it?” (26).
Scene 5 takes place in a hospital, where Kev is lying in bed. Tom, who has returned after receiving a bionic hand in America, has come to visit him. Kev hopes it’s because the two are friends, revealing that he wrote a letter to Tom when Tom was in America. Tom is only there to get the gold gun back: “I didn’t come to see you, Kev. What am I, your mother?” (31).
Although Kev tells Tom he ended up in the hospital because a man whacked him on the head during a raid, Tom reveals that Kev is actually in the mental ward on suicide watch. Kev tells Tom about seeing the Tiger “everywhere,” saying that he’s “so scared” (32). Tom dismisses him, saying, “that’s your psycho problem…not mine” and tells him that if he doesn’t get the gun back, he’ll kill Kev (33). Kev is then visited by the Tiger, who tells him that he killed two children in West Bengal—“It wasn’t cruel. It was lunch!”—and wonders whether he’s ended up stuck roaming around Baghdad to atone for his “Tigerness” (33-34). Kev is agitated by the Tiger’s presence; he eventually takes a large piece of metal and attempts to cut off his own hand, killing himself by doing so.
In Scene 6, the ghost of Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s son, visits Musa at his home. Uday bursts into the room, carrying his brother Qusay’s severed head, and sees that Musa has his gold gun. It is revealed that Musa used to be Uday’s gardener, and Uday taunts him, calling Musa a “piece of mothershit peasant” (35). Uday reveals that he was killed by the American soldiers but revels in his evil legacy, saying, “When you have people who have wronged you…let me tell you, my friend, you would torture them” (36). The two men argue and Uday says that he, like the Tiger, is “roaming around Baghdad” and “will not go away” (37). Uday also mentions to Musa “that little thing with your sister,” named Hadia, whom Uday had raped and then killed (37).
Uday tells Musa to use the gold gun as “leverage” against the Americans. Uday points out that the bombing has left nothing green for a gardener to work on and the Americans employing him will leave, leaving him without a livelihood: “All you have is me and my gun” (38). Uday taunts Musa about his sister again and says she was like one of the animals Musa makes—the topiaries—before exiting and leaving Musa with the gun.
Act I Analysis
Act I is where the play’s transformational events occur: Tom’s hand is bitten off, the Tiger is killed, and Kev, haunted by the Tiger, kills himself. Before these incidents take place, we see the characters as they exist in life. Kev puts on an excessively macho and tough act, though his breakdown soon reveals how vulnerable he actually is. The Tiger revels in his predatory behavior, talking in the first scene about how if he left his cage he would “kill all the people, kill everyone. Eat them” (10). Tom is selfish, tough, and driven by his own self-interest: Even after losing his hand, and possibly having his life saved when Kev shoots the Tiger, he not only refuses to call Kev a friend but also threatens to kill him if Kev doesn’t give him the gold gun.
Though Tom and Kev don’t begin to evolve as characters until Act 2, the Tiger engages in self-reflection from the beginning. Even though he is a predator by nature, he questions whether killing is wrong, questions his atheism, and wonders whether God requires that he atone for his sins. The Tiger’s conscientiousness, despite his carnivorous nature, stands in stark contrast to the human predators of Baghdad: The animal questions whether he was right or wrong, acting as humans should; the humans act seemingly without conscience, and in doing so, are more like animals.
Uday’s existence as a ghost stands in sharp contrast to the Tiger, particularly as the Tiger grapples with his past sins and wonders if he must atone. Unlike the Tiger, Uday revels in evil and seems not to care about why he’s still roaming around Baghdad. He shows no curiosity about the afterlife, taking his place between worlds as a sign of his vitality rather than some moral failing that he must correct: “Uday Hussein will not go away, Mansour […] He is not simply shot down by a bunch of teenage Ronald McDonalds who think they are the hot shit of 2003” (37).
Musa, in this act, appears innocent and unencumbered by guilt. When he’s first introduced, he is doing his job as a translator and wondering what “bitch” means; later, he is revealed to be the creator of the topiary garden that the Tiger has discovered. Musa’s reaction to holding the gold gun—first staring at it before beginning to shake with rage—reveals his repressed anger, the cause of which is unveiled when Uday taunts Musa over Hadia’s death. Musa realizes he must take control for his fate and stand up to the “tyrants” who have previously employed him and harassed him; this decision proves pivotal to the play’s narrative arc.
Act 1 also critiques the Iraq War and the American occupation, portraying Kev and Tom as brash and selfish, and highlighting Kev’s poor treatment of Iraqi civilians. Kev’s behavior represents the author’s perception of American soldiers’ behavior more broadly: He embodies the real-life irony of the destruction Americans wrought when they sought to liberate Iraq. Kev also demonstrates the emotional toll of war when he sees the Tiger at the Iraqi civilians’ home, shouting “man down.” As someone who hadn’t killed any Iraqi soldiers, despite bragging about his exploits to Musa, Kev is as shaken by the Tiger’s death as he would have been if the Tiger were human. The conflict is ongoing— the Tiger notes that bombs are going off in Scene 4 and discusses the frequent bombings at the zoo in Scene 1—and the burned topiary garden serves as a microcosm of the wider destruction of Baghdad.
