"Faithful Elephants; A True Story of Animals, People, and War" Reading Response

The story "Faithful Elephants" by Yukio Tsuchiya is about a zoo in Japan during World War II.  The government orders the zookeepers to kill all the dangerous animals, in case a bomb explodes and blows open the cages and they escape.  They are trying to avoid animals attacking people.  Three elephants needed to be killed, and the zookeepers had to starve them.

The theme of this story is that war doesn't just harm the soldiers fighting, but also innocent people and animals. War is terrible, it shouldn't happen.  Society should find a way  to solve war, they should try to negotiate more, and not be so violent. In the end war barely solves any problems.

The government shouldn't have put the zookeepers in the position of having to kill the animals.  They should find another way to solve this problem, for example moving the animals to a shelter until the war is over.  The zookeepers must have felt so heartbroken and guilty that they had to let the elephants starve.  The zookeepers loved the elephants, and felt so bad for them.  The story shows this when the trainer gives the elephants food and water when they are starving, even though he could get in serious trouble for it.  "He carried food and pails of water to them and threw it at their feet. 'Here!' he said, sobbing, and clung to their thin legs. 'Eat your food! Please drink. Drink your water!'"  This piece of text evidence shows that the government is causing such sorrow for the zookeepers.  It isn't fair, the government got themselves into the war, so they should deal with having to kill the elephants, they shouldn't make the zookeepers do it for them.

I was very touched by this story.  I really agreed with theme, and that war should be stopped.  I thought that the killing of the elephants was very melancholy, the elephants were so pitiful, and innocent.

The story "Faithful Elephants" is about war and how it affects everything, even innocent animals. The story challenges the reader to fight against war, and try to stop it from happening.  The author does this by telling the reader, through the theme, that war is horrible, and harms every single thing, not just the military.

Summer Reading Response:

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck was a descriptive and powerful book, which stayed with me for a long time.  Steinbeck with his amazing talent for character development, made me feel like I was part of the story - enduring all of the hardships of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era.

The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joads, a very close-knit family of sharecroppers, who's lives and family are ripped apart by the Great Depression.  The story opens with Tom, one of the sons, getting out of jail on parole, only to find his family packing up to go to California to escape the hardships of the Dustbowl.  It shows Tom and his family's journey to the "promise land" of good jobs and high wages.  Instead, when they finally arrive, they find out that there is really little work and low pay.  The abundant flyers that had attracted them, where merely greedy landowners trying to recruit an excess of workers to bring wages down.  They struggle to find work, and eventually, find temporary comfort in a government camp rekindling their hope for a better life. Unfortunately, disappointment and hardship continue to follow them, leading to their family falling apart.

The character development was excellent, I really felt like I was in the moment. John Steinbeck was very good at describing the characters, I could really see in my mind what they were like. There were so many primary as well as secondary characters that he developed throughout the story.

Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath was so good that I want to read other books that he has written as well as it spurred my interest in the Dust Bowl era.