The novel, Water For Elephants, written by Sara Gruen and directed by Francis Lawrence, tells the story of a man named Jacob Jancowski, played by Robert Patterson, who starts off as a Cornell University veterinary student and ends as a tired, old, former circus member.
A variety of vital themes that were portrayed throughout the novel were incorporated in the movie in both different and similar ways.
The circus is a big deal to Jacob Jancowski. It’s where he regained control of his life after his parents died. It’s where he fell in love with an elephant named Rosie, who went on to become his personal pet. And it’s also where he met the love of life, Marlena. For much of Water for Elephants, Jacob is almost painfully old. He can barely walk, it's a struggle to bathe himself, and many of his desires are severely limited. He thinks about fresh fruit with the same longing he used to reserve for sex. And yet at his core, his personality remains unchanged; he's still the same person on the inside. To make sense of this, he retreats into the past, focusing on a time when his inside and outside matched – a time of adventure, wonder, excitement, and drama. It seems like all of those qualities are missing from his current life. Even though Jacob has aged, his desire for excitement and wonder has remained. And through his decision to return to the circus, we know he's still got that gumption he always had.
In the movie, Lawrence chooses to share Jacob Jancowski’s story through flashback method. Jacob is at the circus meeting with a current employee of the Benzini Brother’s when he shares his memories of the circus. However, in the novel, the old Jacob Jankowski is nostalgic about his youth while sitting in a nursing home talking to an employee, and then later runs off to the circus, which is when he befriends the circus employee. These two different approaches of sharing the story, although are different, send across the same story without confsion. However, when viewing Jacob in the book, one pities the struggle he lives through, having no family or excitement in his life anymore. In the movie, one does not fully get to see that side of Jacob, which consuses the viewers understanding of his reasoning for his need to escape the nursing home to go to the circus in the first place.
In the beginning of the novel, Jacob is introduced as an inexperienced virgin, insecure about his lack of knowledge in the sex department. Jacob later has a sexual experience with Marlena that shifts him from an innocent boy to a full fledge man. What's so great about the way sex is portrayed in the novel is that we see it from all angles: through the lens of an innocent boy, a masculine guy in his sexual prime, and an old man looking back on his sexual adventures, pining for his youth, yet at the same time comparing them to fresh fruit. In the movie, sex is something that had no impact on anyone. Theres no escalation of emotions throughout the movie and it is not a prominent theme at all, besibes for the strip dancer, Barbara, who was also willing to exchange personal favors for money.
The circus business, in both forms of art, is built on admiration. People line up to watch the miraculous show, gaze at the circus performers and ponder how a man is capable to balance on a thin string way up in the sky. The circus is all about superlatives and extremes. The more outrageous the acts are, the more people applaud More cheering, more adulation. Marlena spreads her arms in the air, turning to give each section of the audience a chance to adore her. Then she turns to Midnight and perches delicately on his lowered back. He rises, arches his neck, and carries Marlena from the big top. (15.37). The audience has no idea what goes on behind the scenes and sometimes it seems like they don't want to. Even when characters know how desolate and dark circus life can be, it still exerts a powerful spell on them. The novel potrays these aspects ver well, however the movie lacks the remarkable glamour described in te novel and instead focuses more on the dark side of the circus rather the dazzling admirable side.
You might say that every act in this book is one of courage. It takes courage to join the circus, to fall in love, to stand up for what you believe in, for what you know to be morally right. It takes courage to commit murder, and it takes courage to walk away from it. Both the novel and the movie portray most of these acts as stupidity and self endangerement, however, the novel does express Jacob thinking of himself as being brave for certain actions that he takes that are not seen in the movie "I'm not going to sit here and listen to you tell me that it's okay for August to hit her because she's his wife. Or that it's not his fault because he's insane. If he's insane, that's all the more reason she should stay away." (20.81)
There are all kinds of ways of being trapped; it's not always physical. Characters can be restrained by physical bonds, laws, or words. In Water for Elephants, we get a little bit of everything in the trapped department: Marlena is legally married to August; Jacob is physically held back by people like Grady and Bill. "Let me go," I plead, jerking my head around first to Grady and then to Bill. "For Christ's sake, let me go! He's nuts! He'll kill her!" I struggle hard enough that I manage to pull them forward a few feet. From inside the tent I hear the crash of broken dishes and then Marlena screams. (18.117)”. and old Jacob is confined to his body “I scotch to the edge of my seat and reach for my walker. By my estimation, I'm only eighteen feet from freedom. Well, there's an entire city block to traverse after that, but if I hoof it I bet I can catch the last few acts. […] I may be in my nineties, but who says I'm helpless? (24.9)”And then of course there's the confinement of the animals. This is a huge controversy when talking about circuses, and although Water for Elephants doesn't address it correctly, there is a subtle discussion. Shmoop thinks the takeaway is this: confinement (of animals and otherwise) is probably going to backfire. Think about it: Rosie actually uses her boundary as a weapon, pulling the stake that's supposed to tie her down out of the ground and using it to kill August.
At the circus, everything on the surface is beautiful, exciting, or dramatic, but underneath there's pain. To get Rosie to walk on cue, August beats her. He also beats Marlena to get her to do what he wants. Jacob suffers when he tries to defend those he loves and suffers even more when he's prevented from doing so. The most telling moment of suffering in Water for Elephants comes during Marlena's first act with Rosie. She has to make an emergency landing and bruises her feet horribly – but all the audience sees is a magical tumbling pass and a graceful encounter with an elephant. Marlena suffers and they applaud. Indeed, sometimes it seems like circus life is all about suffering to create a good show. Suffering is shown in the novel through hardship in the circus acts itself and hardship backstage. The same is shown in the movie, however, most hardship occurs in personal feelings and none of the actors depicted the intense suffering that was going on at the time effectively. This morning, I had parents. This morning, they ate breakfast. I fall to my knees, right there on the back stoop, howling into splayed hands. (2.42-43). In the movie, Jacob went on with what needed to be done and did not show any real remorse. The novel depicted everything very detailed leaving very little room t=for the imagination, unlike the movie, whereas if someone had not read the novel, would be confused as to why certain things were being done.
What does it mean to be a man in Water for Elephants? To Jacob it means standing up for yourself, defending those you love, and taking ownership of who you are. To August it means taking ownership of others and getting what you want. As different as these two men are, they share some interesting ideas about masculinity. Both believe in looking nice for important occasions, both recognize a beautiful woman when they see one, and both want the same thing (Marlena), which, ironically, neither of them can have. So even though we have two men with extremely different values, we see an expression of masculinity in both of them. (And yes, we realize that these men's violence stands out pretty sharply, but we have bigger fish to fry – violence is old news in this book when it comes to being a dude.)

Love:
Love is a driving force in Water for Elephants. The love between the two main chracters, Jacob Jancowski, played by Robert Patterson, and Marlena, played by Reese Witherspoon, is prominent in both the novel and the movie. Both portrayels of the story start out the love story between Jacob and Marlena as forbidden love because Marlena is married to August, the cruel circus owner, yet, they overcome the obstacles they are put through and end up together, iving happily ever after. However, the novel describes treats love as a force that neither Jacob nor Marlena can overcome “My heart pounds so hard that, despite the roaring of the crowd, I am aware of blood whooshing through my ears. I am filled to overflowing, bursting with love. (15.38)”. The movie

and it's not limited to the love one human feels for another. Jacob, played by Robert Pattison in the movie, continuously proves his love for Marlena, played by Reese Witherspoon, as well as Rosie, the circus elephant. In the movie, the love shown

It shouldn't be a surprise that in the prologue we can't tell whether Jacob is talking about Marlena or Rosie when he uses the word "she" – he loves them both and thinks of them both as individuals.
Human love can be found inside or outside of marriage in this novel; the two don't necessarily go together. Jacob and Marlena fall in love while she's bound to someone else, and they make their emotional and physical pledges to one another in spite of that. Do you think the author, Sara Gruen, makes a judgment call on this? Or does she let the readers decide for themselves?
In both cases, the love we see in Water for Elephants is far from traditional.