Judith Kerr has quite definitively stated that the Tiger Who Came To Tea is not about the Nazis. As far as the author is concerned, she's already covered this ground with When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit -- a child's view of the horrors of not only war, but of the unimaginable inhumanity of Nazi Germany.
So. That's that, right? But authors writing one thing and having it interpreted another way is nothing new. In the case of Bram Stoker's Dracula, that interpretation has steamrolled his own meaning behind the piece. He may not have known he was writing a homoerotic novel, but he was.
And so in comparable fashion, Judith Kerr was inadvertently writing about the effect of the war on the home front. Take the opening. A ring at the doorbell and immediately the mum cycles through the people it could be. The milkman? The grocer? Dad? That's it. All she can think about is food, or her husband. Somehow the mention that he "has his key" makes it feel even more like he could be back at any moment, but he's been gone a long time.
Anyway. She opens the door, and it is, obviously, the Tiger.
The Tiger's first thought? Food. Everyone is hungry.
He immediately sits down to eat with them, and immediately eats all the food. All of it. It's all gone, which is when he finally decides to leave.
Again, the mother's thoughts turn to the husband. She has no food for his supper. Or, perhaps, her home is in disarray upon his return from the war.
They're completely at a loss, until dad gets home, and he announces the end of rationing, the end of war. It's over. He's back.
Look at his face. Not convinced?
Look at it. The things he's seen. Things they'll never know. The most important picture in the whole book though, is of course, this one:
Firstly, the explosion of colour. Until now we've been in a white nowherespace, with just whatever table or fridge or kitchen counter the mum or Sophie is dealing with. This, by contrast, is an entire street. The way it takes up two pages, so you don't see it coming until you turn the page and it bursts into view. All the shops have their lights on. Everything's open, at night -- that's right, no more blitz. The father's head is down but he's happy. He's back, but forever, irreparably, changed. The mum and daughter look toward him, effectively holding him up, carrying their hero.
But also notice two other things. The cat-tiger, an easy spot, represents our previously terrifying war-rations-death creature that once invaded our home and took all our food and upended our life. Now? It's a tiny little cat. They're literally walking past it, leaving it in the past, leaving it behind. It's small and insignificant.
And the other thing? The man.
Here we have the casualties. Those that didn't come back, those that came back and were so changed they couldn't function in their normal life. He's the first thing that catches the eye when you open this colourful page, and it's intentional. He's the what could have been. The maybe. The fear.
So maybe after all, it's not about Nazis. It's about an impossibly large event, a looming fear -- which is then somehow avoided.
