Exam-useful questions from this chapter, grouped by marks, each with a full model answer. Try writing the answer yourself first, then check it against this one.
1 1-Mark Questions
Q. Who wrote “The Tiger King”, and under what name?
Answer: The story was written by the Tamil writer R. Krishnamurthy, under the pen name “Kalki”.
Q. In which fictional state is “The Tiger King” set?
Answer: The story is set in the fictional princely state of Pratibandapuram.
Q. Why is the Maharaja nicknamed the “Tiger King”?
Answer: He is nicknamed the Tiger King because an astrologer prophesied at his birth that he would die from a tiger, and he vows to kill a hundred tigers to defeat that fate.
Q. What warning does the state astrologer give the Maharaja after his first tiger kill?
Answer: He warns that the Maharaja may kill ninety-nine tigers “in exactly the same manner,” but must be very careful with the hundredth tiger.
Q. Why does the shopkeeper quote three hundred rupees for the wooden tiger?
Answer: He fears that if he quotes the toy’s real, very low price, he will be punished under the rules of the Emergency, so he inflates it to three hundred rupees.
Q. What does the dewan warn the Maharaja will happen if the land tax is doubled?
Answer: He warns that the discontented people, and the state itself, will “fall a prey to the Indian National Congress.”
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. Describe the Maharaja’s upbringing as a child.
Answer: He was brought up entirely in English style: fed on the milk of an English cow, raised by an English nanny, tutored in English by an Englishman, and shown only English films, exactly like the crown princes of other Indian states at the time.
Q. Why does the Maharaja refuse to let the British officer hunt a tiger in Pratibandapuram?
Answer: Hunting tigers is banned in the state for everyone except the Maharaja himself. He refuses even the compromise of letting the officer, holding the gun, be photographed standing over a tiger the Maharaja has shot, because, as the story says, “if he relented now, what would he do if other British officers turned up for tiger hunts?”
Q. What happens after the Maharaja sends fifty diamond rings to the British officer’s wife?
Answer: The king and the dewan expect the duraisani to choose one or two rings and send the rest back, but she does not; she replies, “Thank you very much for your gifts.” In two days a bill for three lakh rupees arrives from the British jewellers, and the Maharaja is happy that though he has lost the money, he has “managed to retain his kingdom.”
Q. Why does the Maharaja decide to marry, according to the story?
Answer: He decides to marry purely to gain access to more tigers: he asks the dewan to find him a bride from a royal family in a state with a large tiger population, so he can continue his hunt at his father-in-law’s kingdom.
Q. How does the dewan try to save himself when no tiger can be found for the Maharaja’s hundredth hunt?
Answer: After objecting to doubling the land tax and being told he may resign, the dewan secretly brings an old tiger from the People’s Park in Madras, hides it in his own house, and at midnight he and his aged wife drag it into the car and he drives it into the forest so the Maharaja can “find” and shoot it.
Q. What actually happens when the Maharaja shoots at the hundredth tiger?
Answer: His bullet actually misses the tiger, which only faints from the shock. The hunters decide the Maharaja must not learn he missed, since “they could lose their jobs,” and one of them shoots the tiger dead from a distance of one foot.
Q. What injury finally kills the Maharaja, and how does he receive it?
Answer: A rough sliver of wood from a crudely carved wooden toy tiger pierces his hand while he plays with his son on the boy’s third birthday; the wound becomes infected and eventually kills him.
Q. What is ironic about the surgeons’ final announcement in the story?
Answer: The surgeons announce, “The operation was successful. The Maharaja is dead,” which is ironic because a truly successful operation should save the patient, not end in his death; the statement contradicts itself.
Q. Why does Kalki reveal the Maharaja’s death at the very beginning of the story instead of at the end?
Answer: By revealing at the outset that the Tiger King is already dead, Kalki withholds only the manner of his death, which, as the story says, “can be revealed only at the end of the tale”; the reader’s interest shifts to how the prophecy is fulfilled.
3 3-Mark Questions
Q. Explain the role of the astrologer in shaping the course of the Maharaja’s life.
Answer: The chief astrologer’s birth prophecy that the prince will die “from the Tiger” becomes the reason for the Maharaja’s tiger hunting, driving his whole adult obsession. The later, more specific warning about “the hundredth tiger” then creates the anxiety that pushes the dewan to bring in a tiger from Madras and leads to the hunters’ cover-up. In the book’s closing words, “the hundredth tiger took its final revenge upon the Tiger King,” through a wooden toy, in a way the astrologer could not have foreseen.
Q. How does Kalki use the British officer episode to comment on colonial-era power?
Answer: The Maharaja stands firm in refusing a British officer’s request to hunt, but then, to avoid losing his kingdom, sends the officer’s wife fifty diamond rings, which cost him three lakh rupees. One reading is that the episode satirises both sides: the British officer’s desire for a trophy photograph, and the Indian ruler’s readiness to spend a fortune to keep his throne.
Q. What does the marriage episode reveal about the Maharaja’s character?
Answer: The Maharaja treats marriage not as a personal or emotional decision but as a practical solution to a hunting problem, since he marries only after his own state’s tiger population runs out, and only into a family whose kingdom still has tigers to offer. This reveals a man for whom even the most personal relationships are subordinated entirely to his one obsession, reinforcing the satire on his misplaced priorities.
Q. Why do the hunters shoot the tiger a second time instead of telling the Maharaja the truth?
Answer: The hunters realise that if the Maharaja learns his shot missed, “they could lose their jobs.” So one of them shoots the tiger dead from a distance of one foot, letting the Maharaja believe his hundredth kill is genuine. One reading: fear, not respect, governs those around him.
4 4-Mark Questions
Q. “The story is a satire on the conceit of those in power.” Discuss with reference to “The Tiger King.”
Answer: Kalki builds his satire around the Maharaja’s vanity at every stage: his absurdly long royal title, his obsession with a personal hunting tally rather than any real duty of rule, his willingness to risk his kingdom over a single tiger hunt, then to spend three lakh rupees on rings for the British officer’s wife to keep it, and his blind confidence that killing a hundred tigers can defeat a prophecy. Those around him, the dewan, the hunters, the shopkeeper, only reinforce this conceit by flattering and deceiving him out of fear rather than correcting him. The final irony, that a king who claimed a hundred tiger kills, though only ninety-nine skins hung on his walls, dies from a harmless wooden toy, punctures this conceit completely: real power, on one reading, is far more fragile than the powerful believe.
Q. Explain how dramatic irony operates in the climax of the story, when the hundredth tiger is “killed.”
Answer: The reader is told directly that the Maharaja’s shot missed and that the tiger merely fainted from shock, information the Maharaja himself never receives. The hunters share this knowledge with the reader but conceal it from the king out of fear for their jobs, secretly finishing the tiger off themselves. This gap between what the reader (and the hunters) know and what the Maharaja believes is classic dramatic irony, and it lets Kalki show the Maharaja celebrating a triumph that both the reader and the other characters know to be false.
Q. Discuss the significance of the wooden tiger in the story’s ending.
Answer: On one reading, the wooden tiger is the story’s central symbol. Chosen as a birthday gift after the Maharaja searched every shop, and dismissed as harmless, it becomes the instrument of the prophecy in the book’s figurative closing line, “the hundredth tiger took its final revenge upon the Tiger King.” The Maharaja believed he had killed the hundredth tiger, though the hunters had in fact killed a live tiger after his shot missed; the wooden toy, a separate object, caused the fatal infection. Its rough, splinter-covered surface, priced at three hundred rupees by a frightened shopkeeper, becomes the cause of his death. This gives the story its sharpest irony: after killing ninety-nine tigers and winning every close fight with them, the Maharaja is undone by a small, ordinary toy.
Q. How does Kalki use humour to make a serious point about cruelty to wildlife?
Answer: The story’s tone stays light and comic throughout, joking about the astrologer’s dramatic warnings, whether the tigers “practised birth control,” and the tiger’s “satyagraha,” yet underneath this humour lies a hundred tigers killed for no reason beyond one man’s superstition and pride. By making the reader laugh at the Maharaja’s antics, Kalki also makes the underlying cruelty, animals hunted purely to satisfy a personal tally, land harder once the reader notices it, which is exactly how effective satire is meant to work.
5 6-Mark Questions
Q. Trace the complete course of events, from the Maharaja’s birth to his death, that fulfil the astrologer’s prophecy, and explain what makes the ending ironic.
Answer: At his birth, an astrologer foretells that the child will die “from the Tiger,” and after his first kill the same astrologer sharpens this into a specific warning about “the hundredth tiger.” Driven by this warning, the Maharaja hunts obsessively: seventy tigers in ten years exhaust his own state’s forests, so he marries purely to hunt in his father-in-law’s tiger-rich kingdom, reaching ninety-nine kills. When real tigers run out entirely, panic forces the dewan to smuggle in a live tiger from the People’s Park in Madras; the Maharaja’s shot misses, but the hunters, fearing for their jobs, secretly kill the tiger themselves so the king believes his vow is fulfilled. Later, at his son’s birthday, he chooses a rough wooden toy tiger as a gift; a splinter from it infects his hand, and he dies after an operation. The ending is ironic on several levels at once: the “hundredth tiger” he believed he killed was a live tiger that the hunters finished off, the tiger that actually kills him is not a living animal at all but a wooden toy, and the surgeons’ own words, “The operation was successful. The Maharaja is dead,” contradict themselves. In the book’s words, “the hundredth tiger took its final revenge upon the Tiger King,” through a chain of events driven by human vanity, fear and chance, not by any tiger’s real strength.
Q. “The story exposes not only the Maharaja’s conceit but also the fear and self-interest of those who serve him.” Discuss with examples.
Answer: Every subordinate in the story survives by managing the Maharaja rather than serving him honestly. The dewan objects to doubling the land tax, warning that “the people will become discontented,” yet he still obeys the Maharaja’s unreasonable demands, from finding him a bride in a tiger-rich state to smuggling a tiger from the People’s Park in Madras, to avoid dismissal. The hunters, discovering the Maharaja’s shot missed, choose to deceive their own king because “they could lose their jobs,” and one of them kills the tiger himself. Even the shopkeeper selling the wooden tiger inflates its price out of fear of punishment “under the rules of the Emergency,” rather than honesty about its real worth. None of these figures act out of genuine respect or loyalty to the Maharaja; each is protecting himself first. Kalki uses this pattern to suggest that the Maharaja’s court runs largely on fear, and that a ruler surrounded only by frightened flatterers can never learn the truth about his own failures, which is precisely what allows the fatal cover-up of the missed shot to happen unnoticed.
6 Case Studies
(A) 1 mark What single word does the infant prince use to warn tigers?
Answer: “Beware”: he says, “Let tigers beware!”
(B) 2 marks What is unusual about the moment described in this extract?
Answer: A prince only ten days old speaks aloud, growling and issuing a warning to tigers, immediately after the prophecy about his death from a tiger has just been made.
(C) 3 marks How does this extract set up the rest of the story?
Answer: The book calls this account “only a rumour rife in Pratibandapuram.” On one reading, this early, almost comic display of defiance foreshadows the Maharaja’s lifelong obsession with hunting tigers to defeat the prophecy, and its exaggerated, larger-than-life tone establishes the story’s satirical style from the very start.
(A) 1 mark What do the hunters discover when they look closely at the tiger?
Answer: They discover the tiger is not dead: the Maharaja’s bullet had missed it, and it had only fainted from shock.
(B) 2 marks Why do the hunters decide the Maharaja must not learn the truth?
Answer: They fear that if the Maharaja finds out he missed his hundredth shot, they could lose their jobs, so they decide to keep the truth from him.
(C) 3 marks What does this extract reveal about the relationship between the Maharaja and those who serve him?
Answer: One reading is that the hunters’ obedience is driven by fear of losing their jobs rather than genuine respect for the Maharaja, and that they are willing to deceive their own king to protect themselves, exposing the hollowness of the obedience he receives.