The Night Tiger

Yangsze Choo

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-34

Chapters 35-53

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Character Analysis

Ji Lin

Ji Lin is the feminist hero of The Night Tiger. Her very first conflict in the novel—resolving her mother’s mahjongg debts—exists because of the patriarchal system she lives in. Her mother cannot tell her husband, the breadwinner, about her debts, because he has a violent temper. Ji Lin therefore must take a job as a dance hall dancer to help her mother. Although this position does not require her to have sex with male patrons, the patriarchal social mores are so strict that Ji Lin knows she will still be seen as a prostitute. This is a harsh and unjust reality of the patriarchal system.

Ji Lin’s tough, resourceful intelligence allows her to navigate the life-threatening liabilities of simply being a Chinese woman in colonial Malaya. Using her resilience and cunning manipulation of patriarchy’s norms for her own ends, she eventually finds strategic avenues for her agency and secures a bright future for herself. She also even has the strength and shrewdness to maintain her virginity and assert her independence with Shin—holding off on sleeping with him and postponing their marriage according to her own timing and evaluation.

Ren

In many ways, Ren is the beating heart of the novel’s narrative. His innocence, earnestness, vulnerability, and great love for those around him, especially his brother and Dr. MacFarlane, shape him into a loveable character. His social vulnerability also indicts the injustice of Malaya’s classed society. Because he is a penniless orphan, Ren relies on the goodwill of others to survive. He must work as a servant to survive, but he also shows great intelligence and facility with medicine, which he gained by carefully observing Dr. MacFarlane treat patients. By giving his character so much intelligence and passion, Choo asserts that the social structure which surrounds Ren unjustly limits the potential and life paths of those who belong to the lower social castes. Ren’s resilience and ultimate triumph also illustrate that social and economic strictures are not absolute in their power to repress and structure life.

Shin

Shin serves as both a foil to Ji Lin and as her love interest and confidante. Shin develops from an outside character to an active participant; first, Ji Lin keeps her dance hall job and the finger a secret from him, but later, he helps her bury the finger and tries to save her from Koh Beng at the novel’s climax.

As a foil, Shin’s social and financial position provide a contrast to Ji Lin. While Shin can choose whatever occupation he wants, Ji Lin must limit her choices to what her stepfather deems appropriate. Shin already has the money to pay off his stepmother’s debts, whereas Ji Lin takes two jobs and is still struggling. The novel’s treatment of sex and relationships shows other differences between the stepsiblings. Ji Lin’s job draws comparisons to prostitution, though it’s clear that Shin has been in many dance halls soliciting services like those Ji Lin provides, and there’s no stigma attached to him. Ji Lin thinks of her virginity as a bargaining tool, while Shin has been with many girls and wants to take Ji Lin’s virginity as a way of making her undesirable to Robert; Shin can be flippant about intimacy because of his elevated social position as a male.

Dr. William Acton

Dr. William Acton is a casual colonizer. His attitude about Malaya and its residents shows many of the hallmarks of colonial violence, while stopping short of outright or spectacular violence. For example, although he plainly knows that he could drive local women to social ruin and even death by conducting sexual and/or romantic affairs with them, he refuses to curb his sexual appetite. After both Ambika and Nandani turn up dead following their involvement with him, and he senses that their deaths had something to do with him, he shamelessly and recklessly sets his sights on Ji Lin. By doing so, he endangers her life without any regard for the seriousness of that fact. He also uses Malaya as an escape from social disgrace in England. These actions speak to an entitlement, selfishness, and predatoriness that are intimately related to a colonizer’s mindset. Dramatically, he is also a red herring. For much of the narrative, we are led to believe that he is the fifth member of the Confucian Virtue set: He has a Chinese name which contains the “Li” character, and fate seems to darkly favor him.