"Elephant" - Polly Clark
A. Elephant
Everybody knows how it feels to be stricken with a case of writer’s blockage and be unable to move on as you are in the middle of an assignment. But when the situation is the same way in your life and you are permanently stuck with a writer’s blockage in your way of living you get in a state of disillusion where all your thoughts are passing. This state of disillusion is exactly what Polly Clark accentuates in the main character in the short story “Elephant”.
The short story starts in medias res as we meet the main character, William, in the middle of his writer’s blockage. It is written in third person narrative from William’s point of view which means the reader sees everything from William’s perspective. The short story is more or less in chronological order, however, as his wife call him up to tell him that she will be home in twenty minutes he remembered how he many years earlier waited for his mother for twenty minutes. It almost seems like a flash back, however, it is just a stream of consciousness. As a reader we just see the thoughts and feelings which go through his mind, more than a flash back to witness the whole memory. It is shown at page 2 “,,I have a present for you.,, He was six or seven at the time, his mother had been away, perhaps for a long while, he couldn’t remember” William is a writer who writes biographies of pop singers. He does not really like his job and it is not considered as creative or important. He would have preferred to write about film stars but he is really dreaming of writing great novels “he imagined, to write Ulysses”. His way of writing is very systematic as well as his relationship to his wife. He is not passionate for his work or his wife or in general for his whole life. The relationship to his wife is very mechanic. She is not going home from work in her break because she wants to see William and make love to him, but because she is ovulating. Furthermore William cannot find the same anticipation as
Everybody knows how it feels to be stricken with a case of writer’s blockage and be unable to move on as you are in the middle of an assignment. But when the situation is the same way in your life and you are permanently stuck with a writer’s blockage in your way of living you get in a state of disillusion where all your thoughts are passing. This state of disillusion is exactly what Polly Clark accentuates in the main character in the short story “Elephant”.
The short story starts in medias res as we meet the main character, William, in the middle of his writer’s blockage. It is written in third person narrative from William’s point of view which means the reader sees everything from William’s perspective. The short story is more or less in chronological order, however, as his wife call him up to tell him that she will be home in twenty minutes he remembered how he many years earlier waited for his mother for twenty minutes. It almost seems like a flash back, however, it is just a stream of consciousness. As a reader we just see the thoughts and feelings which go through his mind, more than a flash back to witness the whole memory. It is shown at page 2 “,,I have a present for you.,, He was six or seven at the time, his mother had been away, perhaps for a long while, he couldn’t remember” William is a writer who writes biographies of pop singers. He does not really like his job and it is not considered as creative or important. He would have preferred to write about film stars but he is really dreaming of writing great novels “he imagined, to write Ulysses”. His way of writing is very systematic as well as his relationship to his wife. He is not passionate for his work or his wife or in general for his whole life. The relationship to his wife is very mechanic. She is not going home from work in her break because she wants to see William and make love to him, but because she is ovulating. Furthermore William cannot find the same anticipation as