Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Blog #2
This week, I read the first two chapters of Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen. This book is about a man named Jacob Jankowski. Jacob is old- so old in fact that he is not sure how old he is. He lives in a nursing home, but seems to wish he didn't have to and could support himself. One day when Joseph McGuinty sits across from Jacob at dinner, he claims that he carried water for the elephants in the circus when he was younger. Jacob doesn't believe him and they get into an argument. Then, the reader is taken back in time to when Jacob was twenty-three and a student at Cornell. When Jacob finds that both his parents have died in a car accident, he runs away and finds himself on a circus train.
"Age is a terrible thief. Just when you're getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops you back. It makes you ache and muddies your head" (12). This quote comes when Jacob is sitting in his room, pondering how he is treated at the nursing home. It is obvious that Jacob despises being old and senile. He makes a very good note about how life works, though. All through your "young" years, you are struggling to find who you are and what you want to be. All the twists and turns of life startle you and it takes a while until you get back in your grove again after an accident. When you are older though, life's unexpected mishaps fail to surprise you and it is finally possible to live contently. That is when you become too old to do anything but sit in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. This insight may be what the whole book is about; life is unfair because once you can figure it out, you're too old to care.
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