The Magician's Elephant

Sister Marie agrees with Adele that elephant dreams, especially, are “portentous” (88). Dreams guide characters and influence their beliefs and actions. They have different personal significance for each character and reveal different aspects of their personalities. Peter’s dream inspires him to action. Adele’s dream comforts her and gives her hope. The elephant dreams of home, and of Peter, giving her a sense of peace. Sister Marie’s dream affirms her faith. Bartok Whynn dreams of carving the figures who later appear before him, returning him to the trade he loves.

Dreams also function as an important stylistic device. Including the dreams of different characters allows DiCamillo to both foreshadow events in the novel and reveal flashbacks. Peter and Adele receive information from their dreams that they are unable to access in their waking lives. Similarly, hearing Thomas’s song while in line to view the elephant, Peter is removed from the world around him and transported into a different state of mind in which he retrieves a buried memory. Dreams also help create the novel’s fairy-tale mood: The story is set in a place where magic is rare but real, often triggered by a dream. Finally, dreams incorporate the novel’s symbolic elements, like doors, snow, and light, giving clues to their significance and adding to the novel’s richness.

The soldier hat that Peter wears represents his initial plan to become a soldier, but it is primarily used to reflect his emotions. Peter wears his hat when he is decisive and soldierly. When he removes his hat, Peter shows his vulnerability. Peter takes his hat off to hear the fortuneteller’s news and to confess to Vilna Lutz. Peter literally has “his hat in his hands” to express humility and apology, but also when he expresses hope or makes a request. Peter removes his hat, placing it over his heart, when he touches the elephant and senses her pain, and he has his hat in his hands again when he asks for help from Leo Matienne and Hans Ickman.

When Peter’s hat is off, he responds to others’ feelings and expresses his own. Sister Marie sees that Peter is holding his hat and radiates joy when she calls Adele’s name. Peter puts his hat on like armor to be well-dressed and respectful when Leo Matienne tells him about the elephant and when he feels determined, clapping it on his head when he has the idea to ask Leo Matienne to see the magician. Peter’s hat is also a source of comedy. He repeatedly takes it off and puts it back on when he is agitated or excited, causing bystanders to make humorous comments. The lady at the fishmonger wonders if Peter is having a “hat related fit,” and another man wonders if Peter is “juggling [his] hat or waiting in line?” (22; 118). These comments offer bright spots of dry humor that lift the novel’s somber mood.

The fortuneteller advertises answers to “the most profound and difficult questions that could possibly be posed by the human mind or heart” (2). While the mind may ask rational questions, the heart, as the traditional center of feelings, asks emotional questions. Peter’s question—whether Adele lives—drives the novel and its thematic emphasis on love and connection. The heart symbolizes desires, hopes, and love, but when the heart lacks love in return, it despairs and breaks. Peter’s heart reveals his wildly fluctuating emotions, from hope to hopelessness and back again. Leo Matienne notices that Peter “has a lot of love in his heart” (83). Peter’s heart beats out his great hope that Adele lives and “thumps” wildly at the possibility. His heart grows heavy when he loses hope and thinks the fortuneteller’s answer is foolish. Iddo pours the “whole of his heart” into his last, most important message. The heart expresses hope and desires.

The hearts of other characters also reveal their personalities and their hopes. Leo Matienne has a “glowing, wondering heart” which shows his positivity and belief in the impossible, while Gloria’s heart has been broken by their failed attempts to conceive and reveals her resigned attitude toward life (36). The elephant is also heartbroken, and her sadness hurts Peter’s heart, making it feel “tight in his chest” (126).

The heart expresses and requires love. The magician is lonely and wishes, “with the whole of his heart, to see a face, any human face” in his prison cell. Hearts show individuals’ capacity for love and faith. When Sister Marie sees the glowing lights within every living creature, her heart “grew large in her chest, and her heart, expanding in such a way, allowed her to fly higher and then higher still” (163). Connection between hearts allows authentic communication. When the magician and Madam LaVaughn truly speak from the hearts, as Hans Ickman advises, they each find freedom (186).

Light signifies truth, spirituality, and belonging, while darkness represents isolation and unhappiness. Peter’s memories of positive events in his life contain images of whiteness and light: the lamps lit in the garden where he played with his parents and his mother shined like a moon in a white dress. The wheat field of his dream of holding Adele is a “field of light” (68). In all these instances, Peter feels love and belonging. These memories also reveal to him the truth: Adele lives. The memory of Hans Ickman’s bright little white dog connects him to his childhood memories and inspires him to believe again in miracles. The intermittent light from Venus sustains the magician in his isolation and helps him recognize his loneliness and desire for connection. He greets light from Leo’s lantern in the prison with joy and relief.

The dim, chilly orphanage is run, somewhat ironically, by the Sisters of Perpetual Light. Sister Marie, however, truly reflects their inspiring name through her faith in the divine and its light, or presence within everyone. Bartok Whynn carves the principal characters holding onto one another and looking up toward a light. When characters “see the light,” they connect emotionally with one another and feel love and belonging.

Darkness, in contrast, reflects peoples’ separation from one another or lack of belonging. The magician is isolated in his dark cell. Madam LaVaughn stays up late at night rehashing her accident. In the gloomy winter, “darkness prevailed” (43). Darkness mires people in despair and inaction. Even Sister Marie had moments when “the world was dark, very dark” as she sat alone in her chair by the door, until Adele’s infant smile floods her world with light. The darkness clears momentarily, and stars emerge when the magician sends the elephant home: a moment when all the characters connect to one another.

The “winter of the elephant” is dark, bitterly cold, “foul,” and, notably, snowless (41). Adele dreams of snow, and others dream while the snow falls: each of their dreams is prophetic. Snow is a sign of impending magic and change, signifying cleansing and forgiveness.

The snow whitens things, lightening the darkness. In Adele’s dream, the snow hides the dark city of Baltese and its oppressiveness. The real snow that falls “so mysteriously” also covers everything in “a curtain of white” and signifies something portentous (198). Madam LaVaughn feels that that “anything could happen” (166) on their snowy evening rescue operation. The snow links all the characters, including Iddo, who is awakened by the snow and then alerts Adele. The beauty of the snow inspires the magician to realize what he wants in life. The snow sets things right: It restores families, prompts forgiveness, and connects strangers. The snow creates a blank slate, allowing characters to start afresh, cleansing them of past grievances and pettiness and letting them start new lives.