Marlena and August are a terrible match. I don´t understand why they´re together in the first place. Marlena has such a caring, generous personality, while August seems to be bipolar. I´ve been reading ahead so I´m not sure if you´ve read it, but August treats the animals brutally while Marlena seems to communicate with them. There´s a difference between opposites attract and complete-totally opposing personalities attract. One passage showed how different they were. When Uncle Al rejects members of the new circus, Marlena shows sympathy. She declares, "I can´t eat with those poor souls out there" (120). August says that it´s actually a kindness to let them starve through some illogical argument. Do you agree that they are poorly matched or is there a reason that Marlena is with him?
Now on to Rosie the elephant. Oddly enough, I went to the circus on Monday and I saw an elephant. For that reason, I find it impossible for Rosie to be stupid. This might sound ridiculous, but at the circus I was looking at the elephant and it looked back at me and it seemed so...wise and ancient. It felt kind of like the elephant knew something I didn´t and that it was a superior being. So when I read that Rosie "ain´t done a damned thing since but eat" (127) I decided it was not because she was dumb, but because she was smarter than the human who tried to manipulate her. Although we haven´t gotten to the part in the book for which it is named, I´m wondering if the mention in the title means that the book is about wisdom. Just as Jacob sees beyond the elephant´s stubborness and finds wisdom, maybe he will have a similar revelation in his life.
I have finished the booked, but I think that the reason Marlena got married in the first place was through pressure. I think that she had feelings toward August, but they had to rush their relationship that he had forced her to make a decision, so she chose to get married. Also, I bet Uncle Al put pressure on August to do it, because Marlena is a beautiful woman, so as soon as he found something she could do in the circus, he would put her on posters to attract more male attendees.
ReplyDeleteThere never really isn't anything in the book that talks about the water for the elephants except when Jacob is at the old person's home, so I found "Water for Elephants" as an interesting name for the book. It does not really relate to anything or have a great connection to the story. The only reason I can find for the author using this as the title is to show the distinction of people that were really in the circus. That new old guy at the retirement claimed to have gotten the water for the elephants, but since Jacob had really been in the circus he had known that that wasn't true, so he could tell that the new old guy wasn't in the circus.
I think Stampede would have been a much better title.
I feel like we might be missing the significance of the title, but I liked your interpretation Billy, about distinguishing the real circus workers. Stampede would be a good title, but something about Water for Elephants seems more...interesting/entralling/makes me want to read it.
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