Honors Novel #1

Many works of literature deal with political or social issues. Choose a novel or play that focuses on a political or social issue. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the author uses literary elements to explore this issue and explain how the issue contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

I read Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen, which was based and focused on the great depression--in a circus. The book as a whole is all of the issues that went on back during the depression, all rolled up into one interesting and compelling book.

The main character, Jacob Jankowski, a soon-to-be graduating college student, goes through just about all the worst things a man could have gone through back in the thirties. Within the first 20 pages, his parents die in a horrible car accident, and he finds out that he doesn’t have a penny to his name because his father had been working for food rather than money for the past two years. And since his parents hadn’t been paying the mortgage, the bank was taking away the house and everything in it. Not only had he lost his family, but his home and belongings as well. He wanted to fight it, but it was brought to his attention that he couldn’t. He had nothing.

With such a tragic beginning to the story, one had to wonder if his life would get better or worse as time went on. The first chapter of the book took place in the circus, but it was as if we were looking into the future of the book. He witnessed someone dear to him murdering someone else. All signs pointed to life only getting worse. So, with this in mind, how was I supposed to expect there to be much happiness at all? The depression was apparently named so for good reason.

Even after he joins the circus, he has to deal with a paranoid schizophrenic, a longing to commit adultery, and dealing with not getting paid for all of his hard work as the veterinarian of the circus. Nothing seemed to be going right, and it didn’t seem to get any better. He ended up losing his closest friends in the circus as well.

Then, finally, the circus collapses. This would seem to be another unfortunate event, but it actually ended up fixing everything. After all of the hell Jacob had gone through, he could finally live his own life and start anew. Notice that it wasn’t until the big business collapsed completely that everything got better. I guess this goes to show that everyone has to go through extreme hardship before things get better, sometimes.

Piecing this all together, I recently realized what the moral of the story was: to not give up hope. Believing things will get better is what carried Jacob through, and it happened. Had Jacob not gone through all that he had, and pushed himself through it, he would have been on the streets. It is with this in mind that we learn that hard work and hope is what will carry us through.