The Zoo Keeper's Wife

In the section that I read this week of The Zoo Keeper's Wife the Polish people start to worry about German forces lead by Hitler invading. The Zabinskis try to avoid reality of the thought of bombing Poland. One morning Antonina wakes to the sound of hundreds of bomber planes. Antonina is on her way to Rejentowka to retrieve her son and on her way is amazed by what she saw. "German aircraft looming near in seconds, chewing up the skies, flying low overhead, panicking people and horses alike. Pelted by bullets, everyone hurried through clouds of flying dirt, the unlucky fell, and the relatively lucky fled beneath splattering machine-gun fire. Catching a bullet was sheer chance and for seven hours Antonina beat the odds, but not without scenes of the dead and dying etched into memory." This is a very powerful quote, it shows that the bombing and death affected Antonina and that war never leaves ones memory. It also shows how violent this war is. Although it's only the beginning it is already killing many people. Antonina is also worried about her son, she thinks that if he grows up watching the war he will grow to think that that is what life will always be like. "At least her son, in Rejentowka, was spared these images, so hard to erase, especially for a small child whose brain, busily sampling the world, was learning what to expect and stitching those truths in place at a trillion connections. stay prepared for this world the rest of your life, a child's brain tells itself, a world of mayhem and uncertainty." If Rys, Antonina's son grows up seeing all of the killing of the war, Antonina thinks that his brain will be messed up forever. That he will expect the rest of his life to be like this.

The war gets worse so Jan and Antonina start to worry about the zoo and the animals. With the bombs, and animals went crazy. "The elephants trumpeted wildly, they hyenas sobbed in a frightened sort of giggle interrupted by hiccups, the African hunting dogs howled, and the rhesus monkeys, agitated beyond sanity, battled one another, their hysterical shrieks clawing the air." The animals start to go insane, this is foreshadowing for what might come. The animals are in a worse situation than the humans because humans can adapt to new situations, animals in the zoo are dependent on people. Jan and Antonina are very worried about how to keep the zoo running and how to save the animals. They are very attached to the zoo and the animals within. "In this Luftwaffe attack, a half-ton bomb destroyed the polar bears' mountain smashing the walls, moats, and barriers and freeing the terrified animals. When a platoon of Polish soldiers found the panicky bears, ribboned with blood and circling round their old haunt, they quickly shot them." This shows that the animals in the zoo are actually in danger because of this war. Something has to be done to save them. If the Germans aren't afraid to kill humans they won't be afraid to kill animals in the zoo.