Water for Elephants, Entry 3

This book was very good! I would not hesitate to recommend it to someone. It is well-written with a surprising twist at the end and an interesting view on what is morally right and wrong. So, like I was saying in my previous post, I found it very interesting on what was accepted as “good” in this story. In all stories, depending on the viewpoint of the narrator/main character, different things are viewed as right or wrong, whether or not they are accepted by society as right or wrong as well. Most commonly, however, things that are portrayed as “right” in books are also usually “right” in the world, unless you are reading a book from the bad guy’s point of view, etc. In this book in particular, like I was saying in the previous post, cheating (as in, cheating on your spouse) is allowed, and the original husband is even viewed as the antagonist. The reason that I am commenting on this in this post, even though I also commented on it in my previous post, is that (spoiler alert), in the end, August (the original husband) is killed and Marlena and Jacob get to go start their life and have children and work on a different circus, and it is viewed as a happy ending. In fact, it is such a morbid and descriptive ending that I do not even know if it can be considered happy! The author writes, “She [the elephant] lifts the stake as though it weighs nothing and splits his head in a single clean movement- ponk- like cracking a hard-boiled egg. She continues to hold the stake until he topples forward, and then she slides it almost lazily back into the earth...

Almost immediately a herd of zebras passes in front of them. Flailing human limbs flash between pounding black and white legs. Up and down, a hand, a foot, twisting and bouncing bonelessly. When the herd passes, the thing that was August is a tangled mass of flesh, innards, and straw” (309). The best part about this is that this story of the head-splitting-trampling story also doubles as the prologue. Now that is an example of a compelling hook! I like this full circle ending because in the beginning, I was really confused as to what was happening (especially since Jacob turned to an old man right after sharing this gross story), but in the end, the whole story has come together, and the reader has an epiphany of the entire event (assuming they forgot about the prologue until they read the end, like me). I think it takes a lot of talent to be able to write the ending in the beginning of the book that still makes sense, but you are not giving away the ending of the book (does that even make sense? Probably not, which is why I am so amazed that the author was able to do it!) I think, overall, the author is very talented, stylistically, to be able to do these cool things such as tie in the author as an old man and a young man in parallel stories, and the ending/beginning passage, etc. For these reasons, I think the book was very good, and I recommend reading it (see, I did the full circle ending, giving-the-ending-away-in-the-beginning thing too!)