Water For Elephants part 1

            I wish I didn’t know what Jacob meant when he talks about “the silent ones, the ones with Frozen Faces and withering limbs or whose heads and hands shake too violently to hold utensils…” (8). But, I know exactly what he’s talking about; as a young child, I had taken many trips to a nursing home visiting my great grandmother (my dad’s dad’s mom) in which case I had to experience and internalize the images of old women either not doing anything, or telling me that they would get presents for me from their closet. They didn’t have a closet. I remember other people’s great grandparents shriveled up and sometimes repeating the same sentences to themselves or screaming in the hall ways for no reason. I experienced what people who suffered dementia and other illnesses that took away their senses and ability to take care of themselves. It was all really difficult watching these people losing their minds.

            In the first chapter we meet Jacob Jankowski, the main character in Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen. He used to work in a Circus, but now he lives in a nursing home because of age, but mostly injury. He doesn’t belong in the Nursing Home-the crowd is too dull for him. His body is aging quickly, but his mind is still sharp. All his choices are taken; he has to eat what he’s given. He longs for crunchy apples and corn on the cobb even more than a women. Jacob had been married for a lifetime, “Being the survivor stinks,” (13).  I find Jacob to be very selfless because even though he hates being the survivor, he’s happy that he was the one to suffer through loneliness, loss, and being put into a nursing home by his family, rather than his love having to go through that.

            Water For Elephants apparently is a book that jumps from one time period, Jacob at 23, to the present day, Jacob at 90 or 93 (he can’t quite remember). A Cornell educated Veterinarian who was in his last week of Veterinary school was given the chilling news that his parents had died in a vehicle accident. The year was 1931. The country was sinking into the Great Depression. Jacob’s dad, a Veterinarian as well, died in debt and left Jacob with nothing. Nothing but his Ivy League education. Jacob returns to school to take final exams, but can’t finish a test. He runs out of the hall and keeps running until his feet are blistered and he finds himself hopping onto the Benzini Brothers’ Circus train. Already Jacob has lost so much, his parents when he’s 23 and his freedom at 93. I wonder how much loss there is in the 70 years in between. We’ll soon find out.