There is an evident theme of social classes and the divisions between them in Sara Gruen’s novel, Water for Elephants. The novel is set in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. The plot line centers around Jacob Jankowski, a ninety-three year old man at a nursing home. He is constantly reminiscing about his days in the circus. In his youth, he was a veterinary student at Cornell University, a prestigious Ivy league university. He studied veterinary medicine in hopes to follow the footsteps of his father. Just short of graduation, he was informed that both his parents were killed in a car accident. He leaves the University and jumps aboard a train, which happens to hold the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. After deciding that there is nothing left for him at home and that, furthermore, he no longer has a place to call home after his abrupt loss, he decides to stay on the train.
Jacob is immediately put to work cleaning out the stable cars. The first indication of social class separation occurs at the cookhouse. He is told to sit at a plain wooden table and given salt and pepper with the other workers. On the other side are the “kinkers,” who are the circus performers. They are highly regarded and are seated at fancy tables, covered by red and white picnic tablecloths, with vases of abundant flowers, and silverware. Jacob is well aware that he is looked down upon. His surroundings make it obvious to him. Social separations can be seen in many places. Eating and sleeping arrangements, bath houses, living areas, payment, and the way they are generally treated are all sectioned off and separated. Jacob is assigned to live with Kinko, a dwarf performer. He is initially dissatisfied with the fact that he has to share living quarters with a worker on the circus. This shows the divide between the performers and the working class. The two eventually develop a strong friendship. Each social class is aware of where they sit in the social hierarchy based on the treatment in which they are given.
At the top of the social ladder are Uncle Al, who was in charge of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, and August, the equestrian trainer. Both are given respect and highly regarded. August is known for his temper mental personality, which is later explained to be schizophrenia, and is feared at times by the workers. The ones at the top of the social hierarchy attend balls, which require fancy suits, eat in separate dining cars, and wear nice attire. Their experience with the circus is entirely different from the workers they are surrounded by. Also included in this social bracket is Marlena, the star performer and the girlfriend of August. She has a bond with the animals and treats them well. She is given respect mainly because of her association with August, but doesn’t behave as though she is better than everyone else. Jacob and Marlena eventually fall in love. At one time, she gave her food to a worker and Uncle Al warns her that doing so will only make them keep coming back for more. His way of thinking is much like thinking of the workers as animals to feed scraps to. Animals always return to you if you feed them.
Included in the bottom half of the social ladder are the animals. Animals aren’t normally associated with having a position in the social hierarchy, but they comprise a big part of the population in the circus. An elephant named Rosie is brought into the circus act. Uncle Al is aware that having an elephant as part of his act will bring in a larger audience, who is curious to see such a large creature. Bringing Rosie into the act is expensive. The workers’ payment suffers. Uncle Al is known for “redlighting” workers on the train; he throws them off the train in the middle of the night to avoid having to compensate them for their work. He treats his employees as though they are disposable, only to be used when needed and then literally thrown away when they are no longer needed. Jacob recalls many accounts in which August abuses Rosie. He would beat her. In one instance, he beat Rosie after she stole some lemonade. In another instance, he threw a lit cigarette into her mouth. Both the animals and the workers are taken for granted. The line between the two becomes blurred.
Present day Jacob lives in a nursing home, sent to live there by his six children, none of which would offer to house him in his old age. Unable to do things on his own and showing early signs of Alzheimer’s disease, he relies heavily on the help of nurses to feed him and help him remember things. Jacob’s children pay a weekly visit to him. One Sunday, he anticipates seeing a circus act in town. None of his children show up to take him, so he decides that he is able to go on his own. Jacob sees that teenagers that have lip rings replace the simple jobs, like the job of the ticket taker at the entrance, that the elders held back in the day when he was a part of the circus. He is resentful towards this. The elderly in society today are often treated like the individuals in the lower half of the social hierarchy. They are “pushed aside” and left in nursing homes. In this case, he is forgotten, taken for granted, and put low on the list of importance by his surviving family. He often says he feels forgotten and abandoned there.
Gruen sets the novel in the 1930’s, back when the separations between social classes were made very evident. While those lines aren’t as clear now, separate social classes in society continue to exist today based on the same key criteria: age, occupation, and appearance. It is unfortunate that these separations are inevitable and that a huge step in blurring the lines between each “level” hasn’t greatly improved in the past seventy years.
