Analysis and interpretation of “Elephant” + different types of endings
Part A
Polly Clark wrote ”Elephant” in 2006. It is a short story about a man, who writes biographies of female pop singers. He is having a writer’s block in the text and later begins to write false events to the biographies. His wife is also trying to get pregnant.
The text is in a restricted third person, which means that the narrator can see everything but only hear the thoughts of one person, the main character William. That also means that we have to guess what the other character thinks, if needed of course. The text mainly contains description, but there is a small amount of dialogue between William and his wife. The narrator finds the events in the story boring and there is not anything exciting about William. The narrator is a bit unreliable because he has pre-interpreted William’s life and therefore describes it the way he does. That could change if it was another narrator or in first person. William is an adult male in his late twenties or early thirties. He is married to a woman named Ginny, who works in an office, maybe as an assistant, and he works as a biography writer. He writes biographies of female pop singers who are still alive, which is not what he would have preferred. He would have preferred to write biographies of male actors, but someone got there first. He and Ginny could live either in Great Britain or in the USA or some third country, but there is nothing in the text to indicate the exact place of their home.
In the beginning of the text, William’s life is flat and static but in the end he has developed somewhat into a more adventurous and exciting person. The reason behind his development is a memory from his childhood. He remembers a gift his mother gave him, an elephant, when he was seven years old. This memory is what gave William the reason to start writing the false events of the pop singers in his biographies. Therefore, the memory is quite important to the story and for his development. I myself would describe him as a boring person in the beginning. There is nothing exciting about his life, which includes his sex life. It is just something that needs to be done and over with. For example: “His inability to write disturbed him, made him fell blundering and awkward, but he was practiced now in the way this had to be between the two of them, and he succeeded in that he finished within the time he had”. Later on though, you see some thirst for excitement, for something to happen which leads to the false events in his biographies. The reader’s sympathy lies with William, because the reader feels a bit sorry for his uniform life.
The language of the text is simple and standard English with no figurative language, which could symbolize his life, simple and standard with no excitement. The message in the story is to live life or to take some risks. Go out and experience the world. In a small or larger scale is up to the individual. I have decided to put the text into perspective with Ken Follett’s Introduction to the 1999 edition of The Pillars of the Earth. Ken Follett says that if you have had a success in the book business, then you should keep writing in the same genre. That that would be the smart thing to do. However, you do not always have to do the smart thing. He did not. He wrote The Pillars of the Earth, which became his best-selling work. The change he made was a good one. He took the risk and he tried something new. As William did in the end when he wrote false events to the pop singers’ boring life. However, if the best thing to do were stay within the previous successful genre, then why would Follett change his genre? He is being two-sided. He says one thing and do another thing. I have also decided to put the text into perspective with the first picture of the light blue elephant. It symbolizes his development and therefore also the memory of his toy elephant. Maybe if he had not had the memory he would not have developed to the more risky person he is in the end. He might not have change the biographies by giving pieces of his own life to theirs. Therefore, the Elephant has played a key part to his small development.

Part B
There are different types of endings to a story. It can be open or it can be closed. If the ending is closed, the reader feels that the story if now finished. Nothing is going to happen afterwards. If the ending is open, you get the feeling that there is going to be another book, that the story is not finished yet. It leaves the story a bit mysterious, makes the reader want to read more. It builds up the anticipation for a next book. Also then, if there is not any next book, you become disappointed, because you did not feel that the story was finished. For example in “Marked”: “As if it was happening again, I could hear her say, […]. Her scream of terror echoed eerily through my mind. I thought of Elizabeth… of Elliot… the fact that they had appeared to me. Too much of what she said made sense. […]. Whatever happens, we’re in this together. I felt the knot in my stomach release. Let’s go, I said. Surrounded by my friends we all went home”. On the last page, you get the feeling that it is not over. Something is going to happen! It closes the story that has been told, but leaving it open for new stuff to happen, so it is a bit of both. Another example are from “The Hollow Kingdom”: “And Catspaw was the son’s name from that moment until the day he became Marak in his father’s place”. There is nothing to indicate a sequel to this story. It ends like fairytales with a small sight of what happened in the future “And they lived happily ever after” as the most common. We are told that they lived happily for the rest of their life, just as we are told in The Hollow Kingdom that Catspaw was his name until he would become Marak in his father’s stead. “Elephant” has an open ending. You are not told what happened next, if he was fired, or if Ginny got pregnant or if they moved to Australia. The possibilities are never ending with open endings.

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[ 1 ]. Clark, Polly: Elephant, page 1, line 2-5, 2006
[ 2 ]. Cast, P.C & Kristen: Marked, page 306, St. Martin’s Griffin 2007
[ 3 ]. Dunkle, Claire Buckalew: The Hollow Kingdom, page 230, Henry Holt & Co. 2003