Imagination In Charles Siebert's 'Elephant Crackup'

Imagination can be used not just to replace reality, but to make “reality more real”. In Azar Nafisi's work “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, she uses imagination from her literature class in order to learn about her students and society. Likewise, in Oliver Sacks' work “The Mind's Eye”, the blind people he studies use some form of imagination to “create or construct” individual worlds (Sacks 317). Charles Siebert's essay “An Elephant Crackup?” states that elephants and humans can peacefully coexist and learn more about each other if they understand each other in order to create a “trans-species psyche”. This trans-species psyche requires humans to anthropomorphize elephants using imagination, but the knowledge

gained from this imagination is real. We can use imagination to understand others by learning facts and ideas just from thinking about what we do not “see”. What we “see” is reality, but it does not necessarily mean what we don't see is not reality. Through imagination, we can learn more about others which can lead to understanding ourselves.
Nafisi is against the idea that fictional works should be read to remind them of reality, believing that they should learn from the imaginations derived from relating to the fictional works they read. She repeatedly states a warning to her students: “do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth” (Nafisi 248). The “epiphany of truth” is the result of one learning about themselves and others through imagination. An example of this is when her class read the work “Invitation to a Beheading” by Nabokov, an author who she makes frequent references to. The work is about a prisoner Cincinnatus C. who lives under arbitrary, harsh rules under his executioner. His life of constant pressure and being a hero just by surviving against “an atmosphere of perpetual dread” is parallel to the readers' lives because they too face constant pressure from society. Nafisi was not just “reminded” of reality, she learned more about what her situation was by relating to the book inspiring her to create her class in the first place (249). Her imagination catalyzed by Nabokov's work enabled her to feel freedom in order create her class so others can learn through imagination too. This new perspective of life Nafisi and her students gained can be described as looking through “the mind's eye”.
“The mind's eye” is the new perspective that imagination can see through. Nafisi uses the term “mind's eye” to describe how she imagines her student, Nassrin. Nassrin was always on the sidelines or obscured in the photos they took, so Nafisi always remembers her as “slightly out of focus, blurred, and somehow distant”. Her mental images of Nassrin make her feel like she's absent, “like an acute pain that seems to have no physical source. This is Tehran for me: its absences were more real than its presences” (249). Nassrin's lack of real presence in the photos actually makes her stand out to the mind's eye. Nafisi also uses her mind's eye when remembering her living room through nostalgia glasses: “that room, which I never paid much attention to at that time, has gained a different status in my mind's eye now that it has become the precious object of memory”(251). The nostalgia glasses she views her old living room is made from imagining the details she does not clearly remember. By emphasizing the details of her room such as the decorations and window to the noisy cul-de-sac, Nafisi learns to appreciate things of the past. This appreciation through nostalgia goggles (though seemingly narrow-minded since it glorifies memories) makes her a happier person by “imagining” her old things as better than the gilded values she has nowadays such as being forced into a submissive position in society.
“The mind's eye” is not only for nostalgia purposes, but can be used to abandon an old perspective and replace it with an entirely different one. The various blind people that Oliver Sacks studied had different ways of dealing with their loss of vision but all had one thing in common: they changed their entire perspective with the help of imagination. For example, one of the studied people John Hull was doomed to forget his visual memories over time, but he
learned to interact with the world by emphasizing his other senses, re-imagining the world around him (308). Another blind person, Tenberken, has a natural ability called “synesthesia” who still keeps her visual memories by constantly imagining the world around her, creating a vivid perspective of life (309). Their mind's eye entirely changed their perspective through imagination. The blind, utilizing their imaginations, not only understand themselves but understand others by not missing out on the interacting with the world.
People can be blind in another sense, and that is to be blind against knowledge and empathy.

This knowledge and empathy combined would anthropomorphize elephants, “imagining” them as more human-like and would lead to coexistence, aka the “trans-species psyche”. In Siebert's “An Elephant Crackup?”, elephants and humans as a whole are in conflict with each other due to not knowing why the other group is aggressive and thus are in constant retaliation to each other (Siebert 322). A trans-species psyche can not be achieved if humans do not imagine elephants are equal beings. This imagination is not simply making up things as if they were lies, imagining elephants as more human teaches humans that they are emotionally and socially on the same level by emphasizing their “mind's eye”; giving another perspective of elephants than just wild animals ready to be poached. An example of people being blind to imagination is shown in an incident when a herd of elephants killed a man near the village Katwa, but buried him out of respect. The elephants themselves “elephantmorphize” the human so the human is like them, but the humans that want to retrieve the man's corpse do not anthropomorphize the elephants. The human villagers shoot gunfire on the elephants to drive them away, causing future generations of traumatized and violent elephants (334). Without imagination, people would not be able to understand others(which don't have to be human) causing a lack of empathy, a trait important for creating the “trans-species psyche” that Siebert

wants.
Trans-species psyche is a term that Siebert uses for the relations between humans and elephants, but the concept of empathy in order to “imagine” other things still applies to Nafisi's work. Nafisi and her students have similar lives; all are oppressed by a totalitarian regime that enforces strict, arbitrary rules that are gilded by “poshlust”. Poshlust is the deceivingly extravagant things that try to appear valuable but are actually fake. The class “pokes fun” at their own expenses in order to express themselves. The happiness the students and Nafisi gain from relating to each other is a form of imagination, living their temporary new lives in the living room. Nafisi wonders which of the two worlds they belong in, the totalitarian one they are expected to be in, or the private one where they can express themselves to their hearts content? She imagines her and her class following one of her students, creating questions and insecurities for her such as what she is thinking, or “feeling humiliated by the new [oppressive] laws”(265). Nafisi asks these questions because by wondering what another person thinks about their lives, she can learn how society actually pressures women like her and compare the actual histories of her students with the “fabricated” ones they made themselves. Using the knowledge of her class's characters and background, she herself questions if they themselves allowed their new ruler to “”re-imagine” them through the use of rules.
Imagination is a self-journey to understanding others and oneself because imagination creates empathy and asks questions to each other. Sack's blind used imagination to overcome their blindness, while Siebert suggests the anthropomorphication of elephants to create a trans-species psyche in order to create peace. Nafisi herself uses imagination to help her and her students go through the dreadful atmosphere of a totalitarian regime. The mind's eye, lens that changes one's perspective, is a tool of imagination that does not obstruct reality, but emphasizes things that are not emphasized enough such as Nafisi's appreciation of her old living room or when Hull utilizes his other senses more to “see” the world.