In Frank R. Stockton’s “The Lady, or the Tiger?” the king of the land serves justice by forcing the wrongdoer to choose between two doors, behind one of which is a tiger, and behind the other a lady. Without knowing who waits behind which door, the wrongdoer chooses between life and death blind and deaf to which one he is choosing. Specifically, the princess’s lover is forced to choose between the two doors when the king finds out about his relationship with the princess. Standing before the doors, the young man looks up at the princess, who points her finger right. So the young man chooses the door on the right, and there the author invites us to decide for ourselves what we believe the princess wanted for her lover: to live married to another woman, and one she hates at that, or to die rather than be with anyone other than her, especially someone she hates?

Now, it can be assumed that the door on the right hides the tiger, for the story describes the princess agonizing over the decision and the passage about the lady is three times as long and much more passionate than the passage about the tiger. So, it seems that the young man’s fate hinges entirely on what the princess wants. However, this is only so because he chooses to trust the princess. If he did not trust the princess with his happiness and his fate, he would not go along with her choice so confidently- what if she chose wrong? And in that is another choice that is the young man’s, and his only: what he wants for himself.

But what he wants for himself is linked with what he wants for the princess. He loves her, yes? Therefore, even faced with the possibility of death, he would gladly die from being mauled by a tiger to see her happy. He sees that it would make the princess unhappy that he does not trust him, so he goes along with her choice.

And there is yet another example of decisions of his own: whether he himself or the princess matters more to him, and whether he trusts the princess, chance, or his own intuition more.

So I guess this is all meant to say that every decision is affected by innumerable other decisions, no matter the importance of those, no matter how ill-informed the decision made seems. And that knowing yourself is a very important thing in life- whether the young man knows himself well enough to decide whether he is willing to face death, emotional infidelity, the unknown, or far, far worse for someone he loves is a very big factor in his fate.