Abstract
Korean American writer Tae Keller's When You Trap a Tiger and Juhea Kim’s Beasts of a Little Land appropriate or re-appropriate tiger metaphors in tales, such as “The Siblings Who Became the Sun and the Moon,”“Dangun Myth,”and “a tiger of filial devotion.” The results of this study on this metaphor patterns can be summarized into the following five categories: First, the tiger represents the history of the pain experienced by modern and contemporary Koreans and the undivided Korean Peninsula. History, however dark and sad, needs to be told rather than bottled up, and the divided Korean Peninsula is likened to the extinction of tigers.
 Second, the tiger symbolizes the god of death. In When You Trap a Tiger, the grandmother and Lily communicate with the god of death to perform the painful task of moving forward. In Beasts of a Little Land, JungHo dreams of being buried in the sand of time at the back of a tiger reaper before execution.
 Third, a person who communicates spiritually with the tiger's yellow eyes can break the ego’s shell and obtain a third eye to understand the other. In When You Trap a Tiger, Lily accepts the tiger's eyes in her inner self before her grandmother's dying bed and realizes the meaning of life through death. In Beasts of a Little Land, the protagonist, JungHo, and his father practice ultimate benevolence in spiritual communication beyond the fear of death.
 Fourth, the tiger is used figuratively as the destructive energy of a shadow or prototypical anima. In When You Trap a Tiger, Lily needs Shadow power to break through the persona of the "Quiet Asian Girl." In Beasts of a Little Land, the tiger represents a mythical eternal mother to whom JungHo and Jade must approach their individuation process approximately.
 Finally, the tiger gives meaning and purpose to life and provides archetypical motifs for reconstructing self-narratives, moving toward healing and growth. Thanks to the tiger’s guidance, Lily can embrace herself and tame her inner tiger. JungHo lives a life of constantly approaching his archetype of a “Righteous Tiger,” overcoming loneliness and fear.
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