Polly Clark
Elephant
Everybody knows what it feels like to get stuck in the same routines. People want to change their lives, but it can be difficult to break free from these routines. This is a theme, which is dealt with in Polly Clark´s Elephant. William, the main character, is an author who writes biographies about female multiple pop artists. His life is nothing but routine. In the following essay we will focus on the effects of this cyclical lifestyle by analyzing the relationship between William and his writing and the use of symbols in the text.

The novel takes place inside the protagonists house. His and his wife’s garden symbolises their relationship, they say about the garden: "It looks so flat and unloved.", just like it is with them. They have thought about laying a deck over it, which resembles how they want to hide their problems.

The garden is very depressing for the main character, and when he looks out it reminds him of bad things. Therefor he closes the curtains.

They dream about new “settings”. They dream about changes in their life, and Ginny has an idea about moving to Australia. Ginny is blind to the problem, and thinks it is the life they live which is wrong, and not them. It is all ordinary boring days, and the unpleasant environment increase the feeling of their bad relationship.

The author uses an implicit third person narrator, which gives us an insight in Williams thoughts and the cause of his actions, as in p. 4 l. 152: ” Tears filled his eyes. His fingers flew faster and faster. That his career in pulp biographies was definitely over did not matter a bit, in fact he knew with complete certainty that this small gesture was the least he could do.” With the use of these sentences the reader can easily connect to the protagonist. With the use of short, precise sentences, the author gives us a feel of the importance and emotional urgency of his emotional state, fx in the end of the novel, where his writing almost reaches the point of insanity: p. 4 l. 125 “He was elated.” and again at same page, l. 128: “His heart was pounding.”.
The language throughout the text is filled with metaphors and adjectives, (fx. p. 1, l. 17 “that had the colour of haze over a lake on a cool morning”) which matches the mind of William as an author: observing and thoughtful.

The theme of “Elephant” is being stuck in life and also the struggles and ambitions of someone trying to accomplish his or her dream while maintaining a relationship on the side. William wants to be an excellent writer (p. 1, l. “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”). This portrays his longing for writing something great, just as Tolstoy (the author of Ulysses), yet he feels like this is unattainable.

The title of the novel - “Elephant” - is named after the most important object in the story: The blue, stuffed elephant that was given to him as a child by his mother. This elephant resembles all the love and happiness he experienced in his childhood, and misses as an adult as well as the excitement and anticipation that only a young child can feel: p. 2, l. 65: “It was a twenty minutes filled, with almost unbearable anticipation” - the sudden memory of this fills him with a warmth and a passion that leads him to the end of his writer’s blockage. He passes on his memory to Christine, one particular pop star, through his writing, because he feels like she is the only one he can relate to, and he wants to give her his dearest possession. This creative redemption is the point of no return, in which William is finally able to move one.

The change in William and his wife’s relationship occurs when William realizes that his life is stuck. Not only does it consist of writing the same things over and over again but all other aspects of his life are also repetitive and stagnant. This is exemplified in William’s love life.

Also Williams relationship to his writing changes throughout the text. In the beginning, he is almost indifferent to his writing, but has decided that this feeling of indifference is for the best: “if you care too much for your subject your little book might not be able to accommodate all you really wanted to say. To have a lot to say, and then to be unable to say it, in the way you wanted - that would, be much worse than this” (p.2, l.25).

We hear about the “girls” whose biographies William writes All of their lives look exactly the same. William is not interested in their identical lives and is therefore not particularly interested in writing about them. There is, however, one exception: a girl named Christine: “He had laughed out loud writing Christine's life. It was, to him, light and pastel as a bubble, and she knew it too (p.3, l.54).” Despite the general disinterest in the pop artists, he is invested and charmed by the life of Christine. The phony and shallow lives of these famous women disgusts and depresses him, but Christine is not fooled by the fancy aspect of this life - she knows that it is silly, yet she still lives it. She knows how obscure the Hollywood life is, and thats why he finds her so funny. When he looks at the book-cover with Chritines big, smiling face looking back at him, a connection is build, sort of like an inside-joke, and he builds a relation to the photo and the personality he writes about. This indicates that in spite of his apparent disinterest in the biographies he is still invested in Christine´s life.