Water for Elephants Chapter 1 Quotes
How we cite the quotes:
(Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote 1
Although there are times I'd give anything to have her back, I'm glad she went first. Losing her was like being cleft down the middle. It was the moment it all ended for me, and I wouldn't have wanted her to go through that. Being the survivor stinks. (1.99)
Jacob loves Marlena so much that he's "glad she went first"; he wants to protect her from being alone the way he is. It seems to him that it would be less painful to disappear than to suffer through that. (Also, check out how he uses the same phrase to describe the feeling of losing Marlena as he does to describe August's brutal murder: what's up with that?)
Quote 2
Sometimes I think that if I had to choose between an ear of corn or making love to a woman, I'd choose the corn. Not that I wouldn't love to have a final roll in the hay – I am a man yet, and some things never die – but the thought of those sweet kernels bursting between my teeth sure sets my mouth to watering. It's fantasy, I know that. Neither will happen. I just like to weight the options, as though I were standing in front of Solomon: a final roll in the hay or an ear of corn. What a wonderful dilemma. (1.24)
Here, Jacob weighs two sensual pleasures. At his stage of life, both seem equally delectable and unattainable. The description of the corn, with "those sweet kernels bursting between my teeth" wouldn't be hard to transfer over to a sexual encounter, and maybe that's the point. He can't have either, but thinking about them gives him the same kind of vicarious pleasure.
Quote 3
I'm parked in the hallway with my walker. I've come a long way since my hip fracture, and thank the Lord for that. For a while it looked like I wouldn't walk again – that's how I got talked into coming here in the first place – but every couple of hours I get up and walk a few steps, and with every day I get a little bit farther before feeling the need to turn around. There may be life in the old dog yet. (1.7)
Jacob is confined in a physical shell that can do few of the things his younger body could. His body has trapped and betrayed him: it's keeping him from walking and landed him in a nursing home. Ugh.
Quote 4
I cling to my anger with every ounce of humanity left in my ruined body, but it's no use. It slips away, like a wave from shore. I am pondering this sad fact when I realize the blackness of sleep is circling my head. It's been there awhile, biding its time and growing closer with each revolution. I give up on rage, which at this point has become a formality, and make a mental note to get angry again in the morning. Then I let myself drift, because there's really no fighting it. (1.90)
Again, Jacob's spirit has become imprisoned in his physical body. Here he's a prisoner to the drugs the doctor and nurse have forced on him. Even though he "cling[s] to his anger," his "ruined body" won't help him. He has no choice but to give up and submit to the confinement.
Quote 5
Even in your twenties you know how old you are. I'm twenty-three, you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen. It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm – you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you're not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it. (1.2)
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?
Quote 6
But there's nothing to be done about it. All I can do is put in time waiting for the inevitable, observing as the ghosts of my past rattle around my vacuous present. They crash and bang and make themselves at home, mostly because there's no competition. I've stopped fighting them. (1.101)
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).