Book Club: Water For Elephants Ch 4-6
Welcome to the Water For Elephants book club! Today we’ll be discussing chapters 4-6. Please discuss freely with your fellow readers and, most importantly, have fun! We’ve posted a few discussion questions below to get the conversation started, but feel free to ignore them and start your own discussions!
Spoiler Warning! Comments will contain book spoilers for the chapters being discussed; however, we do ask that those who have read ahead in the book not spoil future chapters for those who haven’t!
Discussion Questions
1. What was your first impression of Marlena?
2. At the beginning of the book, Jacob has a hard time adjusting to the circus life. Why do you think this is?
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Which first impression? the red herring in the prolog? the old Jacob recalling the mother of his 5 children with whom he spent 60 years and is glad that she went first so she doesn't have to bare being the surviver left alone because that hurts so much… or the first sight of the young woman with the beautiful horse who looks like his college sweetheart? I perfer the old man's tribute to a women who could hold his heart for a life time.
When I first read about Marlena I thought she was enthusiastic. At a first impression she seems happy of her life, really at ease in the circus world, like it suits her, like she belongs to it. After reading of her reaction to August's behaviour I thought that behind this happy face there was a sort of fear for this unstable husband and a resignation to this life. It's like she tries to take the good out of this life and accept it.
I guess Jacob litterally bumps into this surreal world, and what's really hard for him is to learn the rules. Circus is like a world apart, with its rules and laws, and it's difficult for an ordinary person to understand it. Plus, he has just gone through a terrible experience that apparently he tries to forget and suppress and he doesn't know where he's going, he's got no place to go or hide, no goal to reach, nothing has sense anymore. He just tries to survive day by day, and this is what life has given to him at the moment, so he tries to pull something good out of it while he waits for his pain to end.
WOW, Melissa, I totally agree with your feelings about Jacob being placed in the middle of this world unlike anything he has ever known, and just struggling to find a place, temporary or not, through all the pain.
I don't remember my first impressionos Marlena. I felt there was more conflict in her life than the eye could see…because just thinking about a women who is about 30 in the context of 1931, having no children and an older husband and a demanding career, there has to be something different about her. Most women would want the home and children, so right there, you know she is either very strong, or very damaged.
Sorry I am a week behind on my book club discussion. :)
Why would Jacob have trouble adjusting to circus life? lets see ,he has lost everything he ever held dear in the span of a few days and been plunged into a sub culture he probably never knew exiisted.Jacob has a different outlook on morals, and sex and what constitutes decent behavior… From middle class college student used to small town rural NY state.life style and morals he is catapulted into a trashy, shiftless , amoral rootless life on a train.. where people are brutal to each other and so insecure that they have to have a system so the perormers get to look down on the working men & and they can look down on polocks and the jews-Where ever one is always drinking even when it is the middle of prohabition Where one of his first tasks is guarding the whore's tent ( the first naked woman he ever saw by the way) Jacob's attraction to a marrried woman ,makes him ashamed and sends him off in search of a church confessional. Jacob is a man in shock in an alien environment over come by the first loves of his life.
1) My first impression of Marlena was that she was happy with the life that she had. She also seemed a little stuck up…kinda of like she thought that she was better then everyone. I know thats the life she was brought into between performers and workers, but still….I thought that seemed like she really did have a love for the animals and so forth. The women in that era were a different then the women in ours, but keeping that in mind, why did she appear to like that life so much? Was it all just an act to keep August happy?…
2) I don't think that Jacob adjusted very well because like Melissa said, he was going through a traumatic time in his life. He didn't know how to cope with everything was going on. He was expecting to go to this one particular life as a Vetinarian in his father's pratice and just settle down with some girl with a family with the whole white picket fence scenario. But he couldn't have that. He felt like his whole world wasn't what he had always thought it to be. He was just a kid trying to survive day to day. He wasn't prepared to have any real responsibilites that he was forced to have just yet.