“Elephant” is a short story written by the Canadian poet Polly Clark. The story characterizes the daily life of a man named William. It contains plenty of relevant themes, themes of relevance to the modern society. Themes like relations, fame, the everyday life and dreams.
The narrator is a third-person limited narrator. The story is told from the perspective of the main character William. It gives us a glimpse of his home life, his feelings, impressions and thoughts. The main character William is a writer. He writes biographies, the life stories of famous pop stars. He assumes that all these pop stars are identical. ”The slim volumes reflected the slim lives of his subjects, and his slim interest in them. Apart from the pattern of their rise and decline the girls seemed to him exactly the same” , he assumes, that the subject of his biographies is deadly monotonous. He has a tedious work, writing about the same subject day in and day out. William has his own method of working. He believes that notes and facts form a valuable story. William has also his own adage, “..Writing was 99 percent about commitment not inspiration had not helped him shift a single page in all that time”. He assumes, that writ-ing is not about inspiration and encouragement. He believes, that qualities like dedication, loyalty, adherence, are more important to contain. William is dealing with a big complication during his writing. He can’t focus, so he isolates himself from the outside world, he can’t even write, if there’s a view into the garden. William is not a successful writer, and his biographies are neither described as creative nor valuable, but his mind is still full of reflections and speculations; ”No one ever described William’s writing as creative or important but with things on your mind it was as impossible to write unimportant, forgettable things as it was, he imagined, to write Ulysses” . William is normally acceptable at writing, but suddenly he builds up a writer’s block, ”This inability to write a word had gone on for weeks”, he has never tried something like this, and he doesn’t know how to cure it. The problem occurs, because of a picture of a pop star named Sandie,”The picture depressed him and he was not sure why. Was it her un-attainable sexiness? His lost youth? He didn’t think so – he had seen so many pictures of girls just like this”, , the biggest problem is that he can’t figure out why, this picture is causing him so many troubles. William has a humdrum relationship to his wife. It seems like, they have no passion, and he is very passive in their relationship. ”’Maybe lay a deck over the whole thing.’ ’Let’s see what happens’.” His relationship is a symbol on his life. William is way too often passive, and he doesn’t challenge himself. He is always well prepared, and he doesn’t take any risks. The quote “Bette safe than sorry” fits pretty well on William. William is dealing with some new feelings at the end of the story. William is for the first time in the story satisfied and thrilled. ”William smiled, pleased with himself, and the sudden rush of words. His fingers quickened across the keys” William is elated with fiction. All these feeling are brand-new for William, for the first time in his career; he is content with his writing. He finds himself in fiction, and he lives out his creative side. William knows, that he’s done with writing biographies; he wants to make his last biography unforgettable. “He wanted to give her something that would keep her safe in a brilliant future, that would last for as long print survived on paper, something she could hold onto long after he had vanished from the face of the earth” This is a positive change for William. He is now ready to live out his dream, do something for himself. He believes in himself, and most important he has faith in his own abilities. Without a confidence in your own abilities you cannot be successful.
Life is limited, and we can’t anticipate when our time is up. It’s crucial, that we don’t count the days, but that we make the days count. William is obviously not making his dream come true, and it seems like he isn’t delighted with his currently life situation. A relationship between two people can have very different definitions. Relationships are generally wonderful and play a major role in many human lives. However there is many times when a relationship can turn out wrong, because there is no understanding, a feeling of distance, and a lack of communication. Often we ignore these prob-lems, it’s easy and we don’t blow up a big conflict. We have to accept that wherever there are peo-ple, there will always be conflict. Sometimes conflicts can have positive outcomes. You need to remember yourself, and your own needs. William has obviously lost himself in his marriage and his job. He needs to maintain all of the interests, all the dreams, he had before his marriage. You might say, that William suppresses his own creativity. ”William made the best of what he had been given”. Wil-liam is actually a clever writer, and he has a great knowledge of literature. He refers Ulysses and Tolstoy, both of them are substantial writers. In spite of that he is still content with his writing. Wil-liam needs to start focus on his own career, his own needs, because if he doesn’t, he will slowly loose the track of everything he loves.
Britney Spears a picture made by a photograph. In the picture we see the famous pop star Britney spears. This picture builds up a contrast with Elephant. William is living an unobtrusive life, in most of the story he is described as a nervous man. He doesn’t have any faith in his own abilities. A pop star like Britney spears is living a totally different life. In her business she needs to put herself in focus, it’s important to be in the spotlight. She needs to act self-confident, fearless, and self-assured. So they live two totally different lives. You can also put the texts into perspective to “in-troduction to the 1999 edition of The Pillars of the Eearth”, the writer Ken Follett writes, that writ-ing about the same stuff is the standards of the book business. This is accurate the problem with William. William writes biographies about pop stars, a topic he finds very borrowing.