“My essay on tigers started with the question of whether Blake, when he wrote ‘The Tyger,’ had ever seen a real tiger,” says Eliot Weinberger in an interview by Srikanth Reddy for the Paris Review’s “Art of the Essay” series. “That got me looking into the mythology and image of the tiger in the West.” Stemming from a deceptively simple question, Weinberger’s celebrated essay “Paper Tigers” investigates the complex history of tiger iconography and fascination with the wild animal. Write an essay that begins with a simple question and draws from a piece of mythos, whether cultural or private, that is present in your life. What associations and symbolisms does your subject conjure for you?
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