Who’s Tiger, Now?
The exorbitant amount of irony in this story begins with the title. It would truly be an ironic to say that Miss Packletide has a tiger. She winds up with a tiger skin rug which she is famous for having shot to death, but the only non-ironic part of that sentence is that she does have a tiger skin rug.
Death of a Tiger
The whole point of the story is for Mrs. Packletide to go to India and shoot a tiger in order to one-up her socialite rival, Loona Bimberton. She does go to India and she does shoot a rifle. Ironically, however, the tiger is so old and feeble that it actually dies of a heart attack at the shock of the sound of the rifle.
The Paid Companion
The real protagonist of the story is neither Packletide nor the tiger, but Packletide’s paid companion, Miss Mebbin. Without going into spoiler alert territory, the ending is ironic in part because the socialite with more money than brains winds up paying way more to have Miss Mebbin as a companion than she ever imagined.
The Predator
Another important aspect of the profoundly ironic ending is that Mrs. Packletide travels all the way to India to shoot a dangerous predator in order to impress…well, somebody, probably. As it will turn out, however, the most dangerous predator during that whole shooting incident is not the tiger, but the dowdy and profoundly underestimated Miss Mebbin.
Socialites are Pretty Stupid
The fundamental irony at work in the story is that Packletide and Loona Bimberton are localized celebrities only because of accidents of birth and the virtue of being born into an aristocratic class system where the merit of a name is based far less on accomplishment than how far back into recorded history it can be traced. Ultimately, the two women who enjoy all the benefits of wealth and privilege are both in their own ways revealed as, well, pretty stupid women living pretty pointless lives that are, nonetheless, celebrated in a press operated by people somehow even dumber.