Links and Displays- Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants- chapter 2-3

 

We're back in the past in the year 1931 (linked is a website with fashion crazes in 1931).  Jacob is in a veterinary school classroom at Cornell and a woman named Catherine Hale is taunting him.  The class is interrupted by the Dean, who pulls Jacob away.  The narrator is worried that he's in trouble, but it turns out to be much, much worse: both his parents have been killed in a car crash. Jacob has to go back to his hometown and identify his parents' bodies, after seeing them the sight scares him and he starts puking.

 He ends up heading back to his old house, where everything is still set up the same.  Jacob was supposed to be working in his dad's veterinary practice after graduation.  Jacob is consumed by grief, and people from the church come to take care of him.  Later, he finds out times have been hard and his parents died with hardly any money saved. It turns out that his family home and the veterinary practice are about to be seized.  Jacob goes back to school but is totally out of it.He's almost finished with his degree, but he can't concentrate. During the final exam, he gets really stressed out and walks out without finishing. 

 Jacob decides to live not knowing where he should go. He ends up in a forest somewhere.  This made me curious to see if people are allowed to even live of stay in the woods, when I looked it up I found this article by  InfoLicious which answered my question.  Jacob soon realizes he's near train tracks, and a big train is about to pass by. He races after the train, jumps, and against all odds falls into one of the train cars – but only after cutting himself and getting all scratched up. The video embedded below shows how fast the train goes and how many stunts you can do.

 

 

 On the train, Jacob finds himself in a room with four guys. One of them, Blackie, attacks Jacob and tries to push him off the train. Another, an older guy named Camel, jumps in to stop Blackie. He takes a second to evaluate Jacob. Jacob won't admit too many details about himself, but Camel lets him stick around. He suggests that maybe Jacob can get a job with the people riding the train – it turns out they're all part of a huge circus, the Benzini Brothers. 

 

 

A circus train is always a lot of carts, this is one of a circus trains passing by across a road.