I finished Water for Elephants last night! Afterwards I had a hard time putting the book down so I read the interview with Sara Gruen. I'm intrigued by how she used Jacob from the book of Genesis as the backbone for the novel. Honestly, I don't think I would have noticed this on my own, but below are some biblical references that other people noticed. Have any of you made other connections? Is this biblical re-telling a stretch?
- Anagrams: both exact and phonetic: Catherine Hale=Leah, Marlena L'Arche=Rachel, Alan Bunkel (Uncle Al)=Uncle Laban
- flat rock that he sleeps on on the river bank at the beginning of the book
- the dream
- the animal husbandry for Uncle Laban
- Jacob and Rachel (Marlena) leave with Uncle Al's (Uncle Laban's) best livestock
- Jacob must do an additional seven years of animal husbandry in order to be with Marlena
- he breaks his hip
- some of his children's names are the same
In the interview with Sara Gruen at the end of the novel, the author admits that at the time she started to write Water for Elephants she was working on another book but stumbled across old circus photos. The photos inspired her to research and eventually write the book. I think incorporating the photos in the book adds a touch of truth. Can't wait to discuss this more next Friday!
Happy reading...
Marit
That's really interesting! I never even thought of that, although I guess more books are somewhat biblical than we realize. I'll have to think more in-depth on this, because just having biblical names doesn't really scream "this is biblical" to me, but maybe there are some other underlying biblical themes. Like ... rebirth? sacrifice? Any true Christ figures?
ReplyDeleteWell, the dream part at the beginning is probably the closest connection. I guess for me I'm always hesitant to jump on the biblical ties unless they really are instrumental in telling the story. And in this case, although it's cool to realize connections, it doesn't really DO anything to me. Does that make sense? There isn't any deeper meaning that comes from knowing the biblical connections. We can talk more a the meeting!
ReplyDeleteOk, one last post. I like what this person said on Goodreads:
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm impressed that the author stopped by on Amazon and explained herself and all, I found myself wondering the same thing at the end of the book - how does this parallel the biblical story of Jacob? And when I saw that I really felt like I missed something, but after trying to come up with things that linked the 2 stories I was pretty much left with the fact that the protagonists have the same name.
I'd like to think that I am pretty perceptive, and I do have a fairly decent knowledge of the Bible, but until I read Sara Gruen's post on Amazon I could not understand how the stories were tied together. And if you can't manage to make those points stand out in the text itself, if only vaguely, you probably shouldn't make the claim that it's based on Jacob's biblical story. I feel like maybe if I had known it was based on Jacob's story before I started reading I may have picked up on a few more things... but anagrams? This was not a book I picked up to discover hidden meanings and riddles. It was an innovative, compelling story that I truly enjoyed more than almost any other work of contemporary fiction I have read lately, but to claim it's a sort of biblical re-telling is very much a stretch.