"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.