Jordan Horch Honors English IV

In order to understand the story plot line, you must know a few facts: 1. This story is set around a 1930’s circus, and contains classics acts you hear about such as the crazy fat lady side shows, and the liberty horse acts. 2. Jacob is the main character, who is currently in a nursing home, and is 93 years old. This novel retells his story. 3. The novel is based off of flashbacks he tells his nurse, Rosemary.

In the beginning of Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, she opens up with a prologue by hinting at the end of the novel. Also, she lists the main characters, Jacob (whose name we don’t learn until the first chapter, Marlena, Uncle Al, and other supporting characters such as Diamond Joe, the fry cook, and Grady. In the opening chapters of the novel, Jacob’s life situation is laid out in full. The reader learns that Jacob is enrolled in Cornell to become a veterinarian to follow in his fathers footsteps.

While he is on a trip with his classmates taking place on a train, Jacob is given news that his parent’s have been in a horrible car accident, and didn’t make it through. Jacob goes insane, and leaves school, right before his finals to receive his degree in veterinarian medicine. When he goes home to resolve the issues, he learns that his parent’s mortgage with the bank entitles the bank to everything in his parent’s name. Therefore he has no house, no nothing.

Jacob decides that he is going to run away. With this idea he ends up jumping on a train, in which he has no idea where it’s destination is, or where he what he will end up doing with his life. After he boards the train, he then realizes that it’s a circus, and he’s going to have to try and fit in so he doesn’t get “kicked-off”. The reader then introduces us to Camel and Blackie. With this, Camel decides to “adopt” Jacob as his little project, and promises to find him work.

As the novel progresses, Jacob is given a job as the circus’s veterinarian, although he never got his degree, by Uncle Al, the circus director. Walking around the circus, he sees a girl that catches his attention. She is the lady who puts on the “Liberty-Horse Act”. He immediately falls head over heels for her, but later finds out it’s his boss’s (August) girl-friend. Eventually, there is drama that stirs up between them after their evening out at a Chicago speak easy, and August and Jacob drift apart. As time goes on, and the circus begins to fail due to the bull act, and leading liberty horse being put to sleep, the characters seem to clash, and no one is getting along except Marlena (liberty- horse act woman, August’s wife) and Jacob due to their secret affair.

In the end, there is a circus stampede, which is labeled as “The Disaster March”. Marlena, August, and the Elephant are in the middle of the menagerie, and across from distance, Jacob spots them, and sees that August is in much pain. He also sees that Rosie, the elephant, has a look of terror in her eye. Rosie then picks up a stake, and as a giraffe crosses paths so that Jacob looses sight, August is killed. After these events, the circus is then ended, due to the fact that none of the performers were being paid, and the fact that there was much drama between the towns-people and the acts that the circus put on. Jacob returns home with Marlena and their son looking for work, and trying to make a life, which is explained in the end

Through out the novel, there is a lot that happens. Jacob changes as a person, and opens his mind up to become a whole new adventurous person, leaving with nothing, and coming back with an entire life planned out, but un-structured.

I think that the target audience is for anyone above the age of 16. The content of the novel isn’t anything bad, but you do have to be mature to understand the relationships and affairs and love that is tied into the novel.

Overall, I loved the novel. It was a great read, and I’d recommend it to anyone who loves a novel with a lot of action going on. Also, I liked that fact that it was on a different topic in which people don’t read about on a daily basis.