Faithful Elephants by Yukio Tsuchyio

“Bombs were dropped on Tokyo every night and day like falling rain.” This line from the heartbreaking picture book “Faithful Elephants” by Yukio Tsuchiyo describes a horrible war that engulfed Japan. In the book the zoo keepers are worried about a bomb dropping on one of the cages at the zoo, and that the animals might run free through the streets. So the zoo keepers had to kill all the animals, and then starve the elephants to death. The zoo keepers wanted to do everything they could to keep their elephants alive. They hoped and prayed the elephants will live long enough and then the war will be over; the elephants symbolized their hope. In times of war people need to put their hope in something meaningful, and something they believe in, for the zoo keeper the elephants are their beacons of hope.

The Elephants symbolized the zoo keeper’s hope in many ways. One way is the fact that even though the country made the zoo keepers kill the elephants; they couldn’t because the elephants never gave up hope. For example in the picture book “Faithful Elephants” it says “Squeezing out what little strength they had left, Tonky and Wanly made their last appeal. They stood up on their hind legs and lifted their front legs up as high as they could. Then, raising their trunks high in the air, they did their banzai trick.” As you can see, the zoo keepers put their hope in the elephants because the elephants never gave up. They tried so hard to stay alive, and the zoo keepers saw that.

The zoo keepers saw how hard the elephants tried and decided that if everyone tried that hard, the world might have been better. They admired the elephants and hoped that they wouldn’t die. That’s why when the elephants showed their tricks, the zoo keeper couldn’t take it anymore. “’Oh Tonky! Oh Wanly!’  he wailed, and dashed to the food shed. He carried food and pails of water to them and threw it at their feet.” As you can see, the zoo keepers feel as if they couldn’t live without these elephants, and if they had to, they would never again feel that the war might be over.

Another way that the zoo keepers put their hope in the elephants is the fact that they thought that if the elephants lived for just one more day the war might be over. For example in the picture book “Faithful Elephants” it says “But everyone was hoping and praying that if the elephants could survive only one more day, the war might be over…” As you can see, the zoo keepers had to go through things that they never wanted to go through, and after the zoo keepers gave the elephant’s water and food, they hoped that the elephants wouldn’t die, and hoped that if they didn’t, the war would end.

Though a big thing the elephants represented in the book was a beacon of hope for the zoo keepers, they represented so much more. They represented the sacrifices people had to face in wars, because they had to be sacrificed in order to save millions of people in Japan. The elephants also symbolize the hardships of war and what kind of toll it can have on people.