In Ken Liu’s short story, “The Paper Menagerie,” the paper tiger symbolizes the struggle of the mother to show her love to her son.  At the start of the story, the paper tiger was made by Jack’s (the main character) mother, it symbolizes maternal love. The start of the story reflects the end of the story by using the paper tiger. The paper tiger links the story together, but it doesn’t stand for an object, it stands for love. It also shows the struggle of the mother because at first, the paper tiger was a way that the mother expresses her love towards her child. But then as the story continues, Jack had different feelings about it. Jack was influenced by people like Mark who was racist to Chinese people. In the story, Mark had said that the paper tiger looks like a trash, this sentence had broke the imagery of the paper tiger who, the Jack, thought it was alive. ‘I packed the paper menagerie in a large shoebox and put it away.’ this quote explained us that Jack was saying goodbye to his childhood, or maybe he just doesn’t want to face the fact that he was part of China. In the story, it was told that almost every night there will be a new paper animal appear on Jack’s nightstand, the author uses ‘cuddle’ as a  word to express the mother’s feeling towards Jack. She and Jack had been apart, they were not like before. The paper animal in the sentence symbolizes how desperate the mother wants to be close to her own child.