An Elephant in the Garden

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2009

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Symbols & Motifs

Peter Kamm’s Compass

As an airman in the Royal Air Force, Peter carries a British compass. A major symbol in the novel, Peter’s compass figures prominently in Lizzie’s life both as a young survivor of the bombing of Dresden and as an 82-year-old resident at the nursing home in Canada. For Lizzie, the compass symbolizes her and Peter’s history together and their enduring love and devotion. Lizzie saw the compass for the first time shortly after she, Mutti, and Karli found Peter after he had been shot down during the raid on Dresden. By the following day, Lizzie knew she would love him until she died.

Showing the compass to Karl and his mother for the first time, Lizzie says, “This is a compass to help you find your way. But this is not just any old compass […] it has shown me the way all through my life” (97). Here Lizzie alludes to the symbolic guidance the compass provided her in times of despair. Peter gave the compass to Lizzie in Germany when they reached the lines of the American army and were forced to say goodbye: “That was when he pressed this compass into my hand […] I clung to him and cried […] He whispered in my ear that he would write, that he would come back for me and find me” (186). After sharing the story of her life, Lizzie gives the compass to Karl: “You keep it […] You look after it, and look after my story too. I should like people to know about it” (194). In giving Karl her most precious possession, Lizzie knows that the story of her and Peter’s love for each other will not die with her.

The Power of Music

Lizzie’s memories of her parents introduce music as a motif. Mutti loved the singing of Marlene Dietrich, a popular German-born singer, and Papi preferred the music of 18th-century German composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Lizzie recalls her parents playing music on a gramophone (a small wind-up record player) in their home, during picnics at the park, and on summer nights at Lotti and Manfred’s farm. Lizzie’s strong association of music with her parents and her childhood suggests the power of music in forming memories.

The motif reappears as Lizzie recalls walking for weeks through Germany on the way to reach the American forces. She says that sometimes while walking through a night that seemed endless, Mutti would get everyone to sing:

These were the moments, as we were singing our way through the night, that I felt all my fears fly away. I felt suddenly light-headed, and full of hope, hope that all would be well. […] Somehow it lifted my heart, gave me new strength, and fresh determination just to keep going. It was the same for all of us, I think (149-50).

The power of music is also clear in Lizzie’s memories of the children’s chapel choir at the countess’s home. Listening to them sing, Lizzie was able to “lose [herself] completely in the music” and “forget all the dreadful things that were going on in the world” (167). When the children joined the journey west, they sang as they marched through the night, and they sang wherever the family found shelter during the day. She remembers, “[W]hen they sang, sooner or later we joined in […] We were singing away our fears, and doing it together” (179-80).

Throughout the novel, Lizzie recalls the music that played an important role in her life, supporting the idea that the power of music does not fade with time.

The Beauty of the Natural World

The beauty of the natural world, a motif in the novel, contrasts with the destruction and suffering inherent in war. The motif first appears in Lizzie’s description of her childhood home in Dresden: “There were many high trees, beech trees, where the pigeons cooed in summer, right outside my bedroom window” (20). Remembering summer trips to her aunt and uncle’s farm during her childhood, she describes the treehouse Papi built for her and Karli:

[It was] on an island out in the middle of the lake—which was more like a large pond than a lake […] and was fringed all around with reeds […] and there were always ducks and moorhens and frogs and tadpoles and little darting fish (21).

Lizzie also remembers summer nights at the farm when she and Karli were allowed to sleep in the treehouse: “We would lie awake listening […] to the owls calling one another. We would watch the moon sailing through the clouds” (22). For Lizzie, these summer days and nights were her and Karli’s “dreamtime.”

As Lizzie and Peter grew closer, she learned that the beauty of the natural world lived in his memories also:

[Peter told her] about the cabin deep in the forest […] where he and his mother and father used to go for weekends all through his childhood, about the cycling and the canoeing […] and the salmon fishing, and the moose and the black bears they saw (142).

Nearing the end of their long, dangerous, and punishing trip across snow-covered Germany, Lizzie and Peter experience the beauty of the natural world once again: “With the snow gone, early signs of spring were all around us by now, the trees budding, the meadows and hedgerows dotted with flowers. And the birds sang” (179). The image symbolizes the end of the war and its destruction, and the beginning of the life Peter and Lizzie would eventually live together.