Water for Elephants, Entry 2

So far, I am loving this book! I really like how the author is able to connect parts from the old man’s memory into current times. For example, there are times in the book where the main character as a young man is thinking about something, and then there will be a flashback (or I guess, flash-forward) to current times where the old man will be thinking something similar. For example, on page 104, the main character is talking about how August (the “frenemy”) fed the dead horse to the lions for the end of one chapter, and then the old man version of the character in the beginning of the next chapter is having a bad dream and saying things in his sleep “about feeding stars to cats” (105). (There are better examples of this connection between past and present, such as when the young man is looking at a comic with a “horse faced girl” and then wakes up to a “horse faced nurse”, but some of these better examples have references that I did not feel were appropriate for my blog (172).)

This book is also strange in what moral values are viewed as what is right and what is wrong. For example, Marlena does not really like her husband August, and she likes Jacob, therefore, she is cheating on her husband. But is that acceptable? Now, on one hand, August is treating her poorly, but I do feel as though he genuinely loves her and he just has some anger management issues. On the other hand, Marlena is married to August, and there should be some sense of loyalty in that (they have only been married for about three years!). However, it seems that the whole premise of the plot is Marlena and Jacob’s love for one another and their life on the circus, and I am going to predict that they get together in the end (I mean, this is a very popular supposedly good movie, so therefore, there must be some happy ending). I personally feel bad for August. Now I know it’s typically not a good strategy to feel bad for the “bad guy” (mostly because you will almost always be disappointed because the bad guy always gets defeated), but in this story in particular, we know nothing about August’s previous life before the circus. Maybe we will hear of it later on in the story, but we have heard of Marlena’s story and how she was disowned by her family because she fled to the circus to marry August, and we know Jacob’s story and how his parent’s died in a car crash and he dropped out of Cornell veterinary school to join the circus. For both of these characters we feel sorry and hope they get what they want (their love for one another) even though what they are doing is morally wrong (it’s against one of the Ten Commandments even!). Perhaps if we heard August’s story of how he got to the circus, we as the readers, would feel more sympathy towards him and think he is less of a “bad guy”. Someone really needs to write a book from August’s point of view like those little Disney princess books that are from the point of view of the bad guy (like the picture book that is from the point of view of the evil stepmother from Cinderella, etc.).

Lastly, what I really enjoy about this book is that it gives me a new perspective about life in the circus in the early 1900s. Actually, not really a new perspective, but more of just a perspective in general.  I really did not know anything about life living on a circus before reading this book, and I could not have even imagined that the living conditions were so terrible! Also, I do not know if the circus in this book is like other circuses of the time (or even if this circus is based off of a real circus/was a real circus), but I thought that the people were pretty cruel to each other and the animals. For example, the “working level” people of the circus (the lowest level in the hierarchy of circus people. These are the people who set up the tents, etc.) often did not receive their pay if there was not enough money, but the performers did receive pay. I guess that shows the time period of the book as well, how it was not uncommon for people to segregate one another (a lot of the workers were immigrants) and how that was accepted. As for cruelty to the animals, I’m not exactly sure what happens to animals in present-day circuses, but in this book, the animals were not receiving enough food, and when they do receive food, it is not good food, such as the spoiled meat (there is one quote in the book where Jacob says he could see the ribs of the lions, so I infer that means they are too skinny and underfed). Also, to train the elephant, August beats the elephant with the bull hook when it doesn’t listen. I don’t know what about these terrible conditions I like, but I find it fascinating (on a morbid level...) to read about them. So far, this is definitely one of my top two favorite books that I have read for this project (the other book I really liked was Room). And I’m not just liking this book for these terrible circus conditions, I like it because it is well-written, etc.