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 IIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act II, Scenes 7-8 Summary
Act II begins with another monologue from the Tiger, who says Baghdad is “lousy with ghosts” (40). He recounts seeing a little girl who dies in the middle of the street. When she sees the Tiger, she starts crying, so the Tiger takes her to the topiary garden. He describes it to her as “God’s garden”—which he feels is “bullshitting”—but when they get there, the Tiger unexpectedly “feels this swell of hope” (40-41). The little girl asks the Tiger when God will get to the garden, and the Tiger asks God what he’s supposed to tell her “because if You don’t [answer], I’m going to have to watch [the girl] cry again […] Speak through me, or through her, or through someone, but speak, God, speak!” (41).
In Scene 8, Tom is in a back room at an office building with a young Iraqi prostitute when Kev’s ghost appears, talking to Tom about the loss of Tom’s hand and his death. Kev exits and Musa enters, translating to the girl that Tom wants her to “stand behind me and whack me off with her right hand” (45). The girl is curious about what happened to Tom’s hand and says his bionic hand smells like milk, but ultimately, she does what he asks. As Musa talks to the girl, though, she morphs into his sister Hadia, who asks him to take her to his topiary garden while he apologizes: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. Everything is my fault.” (49).
Kev returns, and he and Tom talk about the “psycho problem” they all have, as the Tiger haunts Kev while Kev haunts Tom. (Separately, the lights come up in the topiary garden, where the Tiger wanders and talks to them as well.) Kev and the Tiger describe their existence as having become “refracted,” with Kev telling Tom, “It’s like we fell through a prism that night at the zoo and each part of ourselves just separated” (52). The Tiger muses about his fate, proposing that he should “become a plant” and “cut away all the pieces of me that offend the cosmos” to “escape my cruel nature” (52). Uday then enters the garden at the same time as Hadia and shows her around the garden, taking Musa’s hand shears out of a hedge. It’s the first time Musa’s sister’s death is reenacted in the garden.
The lights go back to the office with Tom and Musa, who tells Tom that he knew Kev. Tom asks him about the gold gun, and after initially feigning ignorance, Musa says he has the gun and will give it back the gun only in exchange for weapons. Musa says he is “tired of making the same mistake OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN” by “serv[ing] the tyrants”; he says that when the U.S. military leaves, “I’ll have guns and bullets I can sell because that is the only thing worth anything” (56). The scene closes with Musa asking Tom whether they have a deal.
Act II, Scenes 9-11 Summary
Scene 9 takes place in a bombed-out building at night, where Kev is praying to God (first in Arabic, which he can now suddenly understand, and then in English; like the Tiger, he has come into possession of new knowledge after death). The Tiger appears and seems defeated; he’s eaten something and comes in with a bloody carcass. He says he “tried” to be good and “dares” God to “punish me more” (57). “I’m tired, and I’m not a saint, I’m just the biggest predatory cat in the entire fucking world. So I’m gonna kill something…and I’m gonna wave this bloody carcass in God’s face and tell him, You knew I was a Tiger when You made Me, motherfucker” (57). The Tiger tells Kev that he is the only one who ever hears Kevin praying and asks, “What if I’m God” (57). When the Tiger leaves, Kev prays for God to give him “one sign” that his voice is being heard, so “then I could haunt You through prayer” (57).
Musa and Tom then visit the same bombed-out building during the day. Though Tom has told Musa there will be weapons there, he is really looking for a bag that holds Uday’s gold toilet seat. The two come upon a woman with stumps for hands, who says that everyone there has been killed by a bomb. When Tom tells Musa that he has only come for the toilet seat, Musa becomes enraged and takes out the gold gun, shooting Tom in the stomach. Musa puts the gun to Tom’s head and when Tom prays to God for him to stop, Musa responds, “No God is going to hear you. Not out here” (61). Musa then takes the gun away and leaves.
Kev appears with Tom’s duffel bag and speaks with the woman in Arabic. He tells Tom that she’s asking if he wants water, which he does, but says he’s unable to go get help as Tom wants him to do. The woman says she has a first aid kit but it only has one Band-Aid in it, and Tom realizes that he is going to die. Tom asks Kev what it’s like to die and he says it’s “not too bad” (63). Kev tells the woman that Tom doesn’t want to die and she says she is “made of sand” and that her hands fell off at 14 years old (64). Tom shows the woman his prosthetic hand and she “speaks to him plainly,” saying in Arabic, “Nothing […] There is no God […] No heaven, no hell […] Death is nothing. It is peaceful” (64).
The final scene takes place at the topiary garden, where Uday appears and praises Musa for killing Tom, though Musa insists he didn’t want to do it. Musa tries to give Uday back the gold gun, but Uday tells him to keep killing and that “the best thing you’ve ever done, in your entire life [the garden], was only possible because of me” (66). Uday talks about how he killed Hadia, who then enters and asks Musa again if she can look at the garden. Uday says, “You do not want to see this again,” suggesting he is reliving the memory of her death. Uday grabs Hadia by the arm after Musa says she can see the garden and tells Musa he will kill her again. Uday also reveals that Tom was the one who killed him and thanks Musa for killing Tom. Musa contradicts Uday’s assertion that the garden only happened because of Uday, saying that although he will live with Uday’s voice, “it doesn’t matter, because my hands belong to me” (68). He resolves to create new things once again.
The Tiger enters and thinks that Musa is God because he made the garden. Musa tells the Tiger “this garden is a wound” and that he wants to burn it, though the Tiger says the little girl would not like that. The Tiger tells Musa he’s been “waiting for You to speak” and Musa tells the Tiger, “God has spoken. This world. This is what He’s said” (68). As Musa exits, the Tiger delivers a final monologue, asking God to explain Himself and fantasizing about putting Him in a cage in a zoo. Hungry, the Tiger sits down so he can “wait for something to walk by” to kill and eat. “Rules of the hunt: Don’t fuckin’ move. Don’t make a sound. Be conscious of the wind: Where’s it coming from. Be still. Watch. Listen” (69).
Act II Analysis
Act II is the part of the play where the characters, having undergone their major traumas, now grapple with their changed circumstances and either evolve—or don’t. After a brief introduction in Act I, the topiary garden becomes an incredibly important setting. For the Tiger, it is “God’s Garden” and the only source of hope; for Musa, it becomes a “wound,” representing his sister’s murder and how he was beholden to Uday. Hadia is present in this act, but not as an autonomous ghost. She seems only to be an object of Musa’s imagination, seemingly morphing from the body of the young prostitute.
The Tiger continues to grapple with God’s existence and why he has been left to roam around Baghdad. Describing the topiary garden to the girl who dies in the street, he compares it to Eden and says that in these gardens, and in the world at large, God tests and tempts his created beings, building them up and tearing them apart, seemingly without purpose. Although the Tiger talks in the first act about his predatory nature and wanting to atone for his sins, in the second act, he becomes resigned to who he is, actively hunting for prey and daring God to punish him. In the face of God’s seeming inaction and lack of concern, the Tiger no longer sees a reason to stop killing. He believes a God who acts so cruelly and refuses to explain Himself deserves to be locked in a cage like a zoo animal.
Kev exists only as a ghost in this act, and the change in him is profound: Smarter, more enlightened, and now unable to be harmed by the war, he can think critically about his situation, telling Tom he’s going to “figure out” their joint “psycho situation” (51). Like the Tiger, he also grapples with God’s existence and asks for a sign, but unlike the Tiger, he sees the afterlife as more of an opportunity than a punishment, seeking to use his newfound enlightenment for some purpose beyond haunting the living.
Though Tom doesn’t appear in the play after his death, we do see him reckon with his guilt over Kev’s death. As Kev points out, the loss of a hand has affected Tom in a similar way as Kev and the Tiger’s loss of a living body has affected them; their existences have become “refracted.” Yet Tom remains as selfish and wealth driven as ever, betraying Musa in his quest for the gold gun and toilet seat, and his thirst for wealth ultimately causes his downfall. Tom’s vulnerability comes through only when he has to confront his own mortality and failure, admitting that he never actually thought he would die in Iraq.
Musa, too, is wracked with guilt throughout this act, first for his sister’s murder, and then later for shooting Tom. In the garden, the reenactment of his sister’s murder serves as a reminder of the relentless persistence of evil in the absence of divine intervention. When the Tiger decides to return to killing and predation because of God’s indifference, Musa takes the Tiger’s place as the play’s moral center, resolving to carry the burden of guilt and use it to fuel his independence. He resolves to become an artist again, free from Uday’s hold over him: “My hands belong to me […] and when I put them on a plant, they create something. They will create something” (68).
Though this act doesn’t show the American soldiers in combat, it continues its critique of the Iraq War’s human toll: first, through the little girl who has half her face ripped off by a bomb, and later when Tom and Musa go to the bombed-out building to find everyone there has been killed. Tom’s realization that he will die in Iraq further illustrates the cost of war: “I’m from Michigan. It’s shaped like a mitten. I was never supposed to die here” (63).
