Water For Elephants Figurative Language

The Book and Movie Water For Elephants is Quite Moody Bernhard Schlink once said, “As an author, you hope for a director and a cast that will make something wonderful out of your book” The director, Francis Lawrence, did just this for the author, Sara Gruen, and her book, Water for Elephants. Water for Elephants is a thrilling romance about a man named Jacob Jankowski, who jumps on a train and joins the circus. He then falls in love with a girl who has a crazy husband. This plot that pulls on the audience’s heart strings has a wide range of moods that help the story be such an emotional roller coaster for the audience. The author and director both do a beautiful job of showing the different moods: romance, nostalgia, and intense that helps

The author uses figurative language and onamonapias to show how fast it felt that time went by to the main character. “I tell him about our years with Ringling and how we left after the birth of our third child… We bought a rural property… but it all zipped by. One minute Marlena and I were in it up to our eyeballs, and the next thing we knew the kids were borrowing the car and fleeing the coop for college”(327). The figurative language exaggerates the feeling of how fast the main character felt that time was moving. It also helps readers to connect with the character because when a person thinks about the past it feels like it was a lot shorter than it actually was which is what the author is trying to demonstrate by using figurative language. The use of the onamonapia, zipped, also helps the reader to understand how fast it felt because when someone thinks of something that is zipping, the noise is related to something moving fast. In comparison, the director uses flashbacks and black and white videos of his past with circus music to show the character’s nostalgia. The black and white videos from his past are short and brief to show the passage of time between the story of the circus and now when he is old. The director put old circus music softly in the background of these videos to show how light and happy they were. The director shows flashbacks by having the old

The author uses adjectives and onamonapias to make the mood intense. An intense mood done well makes the reader anxious about what is going to happen and really pulls the reader more into the story. This author does it by highlighting and emphasizing what would make the reader anxious. “The train is closer now, rattling and thumping toward me: CHUNK-a-chunk-a-chunk… I start running… I fumble flailing and trying to regain my balance...I reach for the iron grab bar and fling myself upward...I claw the floorboards so desperately the wood peels off, under my nails… I scrape my way inside and collapse on the floor” (25). In this scene the reader is anxious about whether or not the character is going to make it onto the train or fall out to his death. The author has emphasized how tightly he must hang on with adjectives but in the end provides a sense of relief. The onamonapia that shows the sound of a train starts off the mood, it provides build up to let you know what is about to happen and start to make the reader nervous. The director also creates the mood of intensity by emphasizing what in the scene makes the viewer nervous. However, the director must do it differently because he can’t use words. Instead, he emphasizes noises and parts of the scene. The noise of the train was highlighted by the sound of the train cutting out background noise and music.