Question 4: Who is the narrator of the book? From what point of view is the story told?

Does this type of narration help or hurt the book? Would a different narrator or different narration improve the book?
Answer: The narrator of the book "Water for Elephants" is Jacob Jankowski, who was also the main character of the novel. The book was written as if the reader was watching the story through Jacob's eyes, as it included emotion and feeling the reader received from the narrator. The point of view was a 1st person view. I know this because there is one person telling the story, and that person is also the main character. Jacob tells this story as if he was explaining it to the reader himself. In dialogue, the quotes would be explained as if you were seeing him himself talking to some other character in speech. Jacob is giving the story as both an elderly ninety year old man and a 25 year old young man in the book. I believe this type of narration helps the book, but can also hurt the book as well in many ways. First, i believe that 1st person point f view can help the book because the narrator is telling the story from their point of view, such as a main character (Jacob) giving his whole perspective/story through his eyes. It helps the reader more because in 1st person view you can actually feel the emotion in you of what the character is feeling as well. For example, right at the beginning of the book Jacob is ready to take an exam in his college, his final exam before graduating. The second after he started taking the test two men came in the room and told the professor they need to have a word with Jacob Jankowski. Professor says Jacob, can u please come up here for a minute." Jacob frightened with fear, he didnt know what happened and why all three of them looked so serious. IAs his mind races, he walks up to them slowly as everyone took their exam but looked at him through the corner of their eyes. "Son, theres been an accident", as he put his hand on his shoulder taking a slight pause," An automobile accident. Another pause, longer this time. Your parents were involved." Jacob stares at him willing for him to continue. "Are they...? Will they....?" "I'm sorry son, it was instant. Theres nothing else we can do." Right at that moment Jacob stares at his face trying to maintain eye contact. Then he goes to the hospital, and as he looks under the covers he sees his parents dead. He then cries, pleads, and stars exploded in his peripheral vision. When this happened, i could picture this whole moment in my eyes. Out of nowhere, after 5 minutes of leaving the house, you find out your parents are dead is just really emotional, and walking through those cold white walls of the hospital leading to two beds where your parents are dead under the covers. After reading this i felt the pain in me as if i were Jacob myself and to go through that is just too hard to imagine. This is why i think 1st person point of view is a good thing to include because thats the only way you feel heart-touching emotion within yourself. On the other hand, the reason why i think a 1st persons view can hurt the book is because the narrator participates in the action of the story. What problem it can cause is that you need to know that what the narrator is recounting might not be the objective truth. This makes you question more and more of the trustworthiness of the characters in the book.

In this particular book, i dont think a different character can improve the book as much as Jacob did. This is because Jacob was the one who suffered the most in the book; he went from almost graduating medical school to losing his parents, his home, all of his money, practically his whole life almost as well. And his characters view teaches a lesson to many readers of the novel.

Question 6: What is the author's tone towards this book? What one word best defines the tone of this book? What scenes, episodes, or examples are good examples of the author's tone?
Answer: I would describe the authors tone towards the book as an emotional and endlessly surprising one. The tone in the book is emotional and endlessly surprising because in this book you go through many different emotions. For instance, at first you feel happy as you see Jacob and his loving family and him graduating to begin a new life. When you hear about his parents spontaneous and unexpected death it makes you feel sad and heartsick. Then, as he loses everything you begin to get a solemn feeling. When Jacob gets on the train and has people care for him and he gets a chance to reunite with a circus like a family it makes you feel cheerful. After that when he falls in love with the woman on his dreams Marlena Rosenbluth you get that romantic sense into you. And so on and so forth, more emotions impact through the story creating an enriching novel. This is why i think "emotional" is a good term to describe the authors tone of this particular novel. Also, i included the word "endlessly surprising" because the story is a real page turner. The more you read the more surprises and astonishments you will run into, but it's a never ending story, meaning that as you read you will run into many surprising bumps along the way, but its never the end the story just keeps on extending.

One particular word that i think well defines the tone of the book perfectly is "intense". I think intense is the right word if i had to describe this whole book because the book has a lot of emotion to it and many curves to it. The story involves romance, betrayal, friendship, family, trust, happiness, sadness, anger, confusion, confidence, anxiety, stressful, jealousy, negativity, etc. And if to describe all these emotions into one word which went through on the whole book would be intense.

There are a lot of scenes/examples in the book which involve intensity. For instance, when the ring master August gets mad that the elephant Rosie ran away because of her fear, August decided to whip the poor elephant really hard causing it to bleed everywhere and scream out her pain. At that particular moment, August was in a negative mood feeling angry and envy beating it as hard as he could because he knew that because of this elephant he was losing more money. Then again, at this exact moment in the book, Marlena(August's wife) stood outside shocked with fear and stress covering her eyes crying trying to not hear the elephant cry and not try to imagine the moment. Also, at this time two big circus guys held down Jacob as he screamed and kicked to go and try to help Rosie the elephant from the crazy and mad man. This scene in the book shows a mixture of emotions to negativity to anger to tearful. The moment was clearly intense. Another example is when Marlena and Jacob run away and hide into a hotel and plan their future together away from the circus. At that moment you think the book is over since they are away from the circus and now they can spend the rest of their young loving lives together for the rest of their life. Well that was wrong because this was only the beginning. The circus people barged in and took Marlena separating the two lovebirds. But then Jacob got back on his two feet and ran as fast he can back to the traveling circus to rescue his love and the rest of his loving circus family. This shows that the book is endlessly surprising but also intensive.

Question 3: What are the conflicts in the book? Why are these conflicts developing? Are these conflicts internal (within the characters) or external (from outside sources?)
Answer: 3. There are many conflicts that continuously revive in the book between the character Jacob and the other characters. But the main ones in this case are that the Jacob is someone who has no family, no home, or nothing. Although he is educated and went to one the top colleges in the world, he isn't licensed at his profession since the day he was supposed to take his final exam his parents sadly passed away in a car crash. Now Jacob runs away and heads on a train to a circus. He gets a really bad job, a roommate who hates him, he gets threatened by his boss every day, nobody listens to him, not much money, and the girl he falls in love with ignores him. Towards the beginning this was one of the biggest conflicts. Also, at the end he grows an attraction with the elephants and Marlena, August's wife. When he finds out about all this the book takes a turn back into betrayal.

These conflicts continue to develop because Jacob's character is really just trapped in a box. The circus people mess with him and tease him because he lets them take him for granted. In this particular circus, nobody welcomes the newcomers unless they have a reason to be welcomed for. So until Jacob lets go and expresses his real self to his new family, they will fully learn t accept him as who he is. Also, even though Jacob stays quiet, that isn't enough for them to understand his inner personality.

These conflicts involve mostly external conflicts, rather than internal. Although Jacob does struggle with choices he has to make with himself in his mind, the story mostly has conflicts which are external. I know this because external conflicts are struggles occurring outside the mind of a character. This can mean struggles including another character, nature, etc. The main conflict makes it easy to know it external since all Jacob's conflicts/problems all revolve around the choices of acceptance between him and his fellow family at the circus.

5. Evaluate the writing style of the author. What are the sentences, word choice, descriptions like? Does the style help the story line? Could the style be improved? How?
Answer: The type of writing style evaluated throughout the book from the authors perspective is a type of narrative writing. There are three main types of writing styles and author can prove to a reader in his/her book. The first type, which is the type of writing style in Water for Elephants, is a narrative style. Narrative Writing tells a personal or fictional experience or tells a story based on a real or imagined event. The next type of writing style is expository. Expository writing is writing that is designed to convey information or explain what is difficult to understand. The last type of main writing style is the persuasive writing. Persuasive writing attempts to convince the reader to accept a particular point of view or to take a specific action. In the book, the word choice and descriptions are very precisely written and described essentially. I believe this because in the book no matter what dynamic situation the characters are portrayed in, the author describes the moment with very emotional thoughts and words and gives you a bunch of ideas of what would happen next. For example, in the book when the ringmaster takes Jacobs love away from him and locks her back into the horrific circus where he would hurt the animals badly. At this moment Jacob was down on his feet as his eyes closed slowly. But then that morning he got up and as Marlenas pictures ran through his mind you know that he would get back up and go fight for her or try to make a peace trait with August. A bunch of thoughts at the moment enter your mind, and this shows how the author makes the moment make you the reader feel the emotion, but also create visuals and thoughts of it as well. The writing style does help the story line because since its a narrative piece of writing Jacob, the main characters, is portraying the story to you. In the book you can feel his thoughts and read his mind since your reading from his point of view. It helps because throughout most of the book Jacob is mostly considered the main character since its all about his life and from that point of view the writing style of the story line does help. In my opinion, I think the story line is fine the way it is already written but if I had to improve it I would probably have each chapter or every 2 to 3 chapters come from a different persons perspective because even though Jacob was the main character you really could only read the thoughts from his head making seem that everything he did was right and others seemed wrong. But if there were a couple chapters based on Marlena, August, etc. we would know more about each character themselves, but also their thoughts and emotions towards the issues described in the book.