Moon Tiger

Content Warning: This section of the guide contain references to incest.

“‘I’m writing a history of the world,’ she says. And the hands of the nurse are arrested for a moment; she looks down at this old woman, this old ill woman.”

These opening lines of Moon Tiger introduce the theme of The Intersection of Personal and Global Histories, as Claudia—the “old ill woman” in the hospital—conflates her life story with the history of the world. The process of storytelling, of writing a history, is a central concept in the novel. Questions like who decides what to include, whose voices are heard, and what stories matter are questions that Claudia poses for herself time and again.

“The question is, shall it or shall it not be linear history? I’ve always thought a kaleidoscopic view might be an interesting heresy. Shake the tube and see what comes out. Chronology irritates me.”

The structure of Moon Tiger is itself “kaleidoscopic,” rather than chronological. This structure, and Claudia’s defense of it, reinforces the novel’s thematic exploration of Linear Time Versus Lived Time; the author conceives of lived time as a simultaneous, “kaleidoscopic” experience.

“And when you and I talk about history we don’t mean what actually happened, do we? The cosmic chaos of everywhere, all time? We mean the tidying up of this into books, the concentration of the benign historical eye upon years and places and persons.”

Claudia contemplates what it means to be an author, and a historian, acknowledging that writing a story necessarily involves biased decisions about what to include and when. The Subjective Nature of Memory and storytelling are key concerns in the novel.