Water for Elephants Old Age

Early on in the book, Jacob claims not to know how old he is. He's just old. He says that not knowing your exact age is "the beginning of the end"; in other words, once you have to think about how old you are, you're aging too quickly to keep up with. You leave behind the golden time of the 20s, enter full adulthood in your 30s, then start sliding down the slippery slope to old age. Depressing, right?

Jacob now lives more in the past than the present. He just keeps thinking back to the old days and spending time with his "ghosts." At first, it seems, he tried to remain grounded in the present and avoid the past, but there's just not enough going on in his life now to keep him interested. Defeated, he says he's just "waiting for the inevitable" (death).

A series of small indignities fill up Jacob's days and slowly wear away at his sense of self. First he can't eat what he wants, and now he can't even shower or pee by himself. Try to imagine <em>that</em> – company every time you've gotta go? He insists he can do these things by himself, so he's getting assistance he doesn't even want.

You often hear older people say that when they look in the mirror, they don't recognize the person staring back at them. Inside, they still feel like the same person they were in their prime. This is what's happening with Jacob here: when he sees his reflection, the Jacob he knows isn't there. But no matter what he does, he isn't able to escape the old body he's trapped inside.

This resonant statement comes from Rosemary, the one person at the old folks' home who seems to understand Jacob and see him as a person rather than just some old dude. She understands what it means to grow older and how that can affect someone's memory, and she explains it in the most reasonable terms she can. Everyone forgets a little; everyone is tempted to rewrite his or her "history." We're tempted to ask: is this what Jacob has done? Did he rewrite his story or is he telling it exactly how it happened?

Here's that phrase again: "the beginning of the end." Jacob uses it right at the beginning of the novel to talk about the moment when you first start realizing that you're aging. Now he's using it again to talk about memory loss. How many beginnings to the end can there be? There's only one end, after all, so if he keeps beginning it, is he putting it off in some way?

This moment represents a big achievement for Jacob: he "un[did] three buttons." Given where he is, this is quite a coup, but his younger self wouldn't have given a second thought to such a banal accomplishment. It shows how much the young and healthy take for granted. This passage also reminds us of the moment where Marlena unbuttons Jacob's shirt – think of how much has changed since then.

Jacob worries that Camel will be "helpless in [his family's] hands," that they won't want to have to deal with him. But right before the reunion is supposed to take place, Camel dies. Much later, older Jacob goes through a version of this same worry himself. He's not as "damaged" as Camel was, but he is somewhat helpless in <em>his </em>family's hands. The difference is, at the very end, Jacob is able to walk away.

At the beginning of the book, Jacob is unsure of his age, but when he gets back to the circus he knows it exactly. He feels young again even as he acknowledges that he is "ancient and cranky." He is finally back in a place where he's wanted and fits in, where he feels like himself again.

Jacob had many wonderful things in his life, but most of them are gone by the end. There was a time – after he and Marlena escaped from August and had a family – that they floated in a happy existence. But that went by so quickly that we barely hear about it in the book. It seems unfair for Jacob that the good parts of his life would go by quickly and the bad ones drag out so long.