Faithful Elephants by Yukio Tsuchiya Blog Story Response.

             In the short story, “Faithful Elephants”, by Yukio Tsuchiya, a zookeeper tells the story of death, starvation, and war. In the narration, war pressures zookeepers into killing every animal in the zoo. A war is raging ahead so, for the safety of the city, the animals must be killed in case of a breakout. One by one, every animal is killed, and the last three left are the three beloved elephants, John, Tonky, and Wanly. The narrating zookeeper then turns his story into a graphic situation of starvation.

 In war, I believe there is a common cycle. While the war hits a breaking point, the citizens will suffer the most. The cycle among the suffering citizens is: war, starvation (lack of food will cause the people to slowly suffer), and death. But, in war, after complete chaos, there will be a glimmer of hope, the fine line of peace. In this short story, there is that cycle with the elephants. The zookeepers have no choice, but to slowly make them starve to death. The story is heartwarming, and graphic. Graphic in the sense of prison, starvation, and death.

The author adds the symbolism of prison to show how graphic war is. One piece of symbolism is the bars that repeat throughout the story. On the last page, in the third paragraph, Tsuchiya adds, “Both [elephants] died leaning against the bars of their cage.” Meaning, in metaphorical sense, that the zoo is like a prison to animals. Tsuchiya is hinting an opinion in his story, that he does not support zoos, or animals in large groups of captivity. Also the zoo can be also pointed to be a prison because the animals are in a gated, restricted to be in one area at one time, just like a regular prison.

Despite the graphic content in the story, the author still adds a type of ‘ignorant bliss’ , For example, the eyes of the elephants, besides them starving, are, “more beautiful than ever before,” meaning that the elephants are living better than they  have before. Throughout the text, there is also a sense of peacefulness. An example are the cherry blossoms, which fall before the zookeeper tells his story, and after when the zookeeper is done with the story and tearfully patting the tombstones of the elephants. The cherry blossoms symbolize peace away from the fact that there is a war in process.

There are many symbols that contradict each other, and in which explain what war is really about. Peace adds on the previous cycle I portrayed. Peace will always come after war. And even though the war might have destroyed a community or a neighborhood or even a family, peace will emerge and start to rebuild, by itself.