What do you think?

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Where's the water for the elephants..

I finished reading Elephants yesterday afternoon. I'm still trying to figure out if there is a deeper meaning to the title. Water for elephants is only mentioned in one conversation and no where in the book does anyone actually water the elephants nor does the lone elephant in the story ever take a drink of water or take a bath. Like everyone else in the story, Rosie the elephant prefers liquor, or an occasional lemonade. The story is told from the perspective of a graduate student at Cornell University who is about to take his exams so he can practice veterinary medicine. A few days before the exam his parents are both killed in a car accident. The story takes place in 1931. He learns that his parents have mortgaged their lives in order to send him to the university and consequently they owned nothing. The bank takes the house. Alone and destitute, he walks out in the middle of his exams and jumps on a train that happens to be transporting a circus troupe. We are introduced to an interesting and bizarre cast of freaks, mostly drunken drifters, but also a clowning dwarf and his dog, a fat lady, an abusive ring master, and his "damsel in distress" equestrian acrobat wife and a greedy, villainous owner. Jacob, the narrator is the only "normal" person in the bunch. And then there is of course Rosie the elephant, who only responds to commands when they are in Polish. Although this cast is colorful and has lots of potential, I think Gruen fails to really develop them. As I said before, its like a second rate film intended for a mass audience. Apparently the masses don't care about character development. They just want to know what happens next. There are some interesting albeit unlikely scenes, like when Jacob leaps from car to car on a moving train in the middle of the night with a knife in his mouth. (Gimme a break.) He intends to slay the dragon but chickens out and for his trouble he gets a small cut on his face from the knife. Another unlikely episode: when the show collapses and local sheriff begins to auction off the animals to other passing shows, the damsel bursts out of her sleeping car, races to the scene and proceeds to threaten, both verbally and physically, the guys who are attempting to sell her horses. She manages to bully them into leaving the 15 Arabians out of the deal. The guys appear to be genuinely intimidated. In reality, I think they would have laughed at her, pushed her aside and sold the horses. Anyway, I'm glad I read it, but I won't bother to see the movie.

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