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Mrozek Elephant

Decent Essays

Communism was very unpopular during the 1900’s in Europe and the people did not have much say in it. At Polands height during the 1950’s with Stalin and Mussolini influence and the Soviet push to become communism it wasn’t a popular vote after seeing countries like Russia and Italy suffering and economy crashing. Shortly after this is when Slawomir Mrozek came out with “the Elephant” in 1962. This short story is about a greedy zoo owner who doesn’t want to spend money to get an elephant for the zoo so they are forced to create a fake one which doesn’t fool the people that come to visit for long. He uses symbols and an allegory to convey a common theme that lies can only be truth for so long, like how communist leaders keep things from the people …show more content…

A satirical allegory is a great way to tell the government what they are doing wrong and do it so over the top that they do not notice it and a comedy so he was not imprisoned although the book was banned when soviet rule was in power but republished once democracy had taken back over. He chooses specific character to outline the government in a nutshell. Outlining their flaws cloaked as a zoo needing an elephant. The manifesto calls for people to turn in all weapons and all personal belongings stolen by Germany will be returned. This was all a set up to get the people of Poland weak for the invasion of Poland in the following year. This is similar to The Elephant in the fact that a simple sign or telling of the people at the zoo the the elephant is real made them trust it. Also fear of the government causes drastic measures and when blowing up the rubber “They resumed their blowing, but after another half-an-hour they felt to tired to continue”(203).This made them realize they’re here “because our director is a leftist”(203). This shows directly that it is an allegory because the leaders that tried to take over Poland like stalin was a leftist better known as a radical calling for complete change like from democracy to

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