West with Giraffes

“Problem was, whenever I locked eyes with an animal I felt something more soulful than I ever felt from the humans I knew, and what I saw in that sprawled giraffe’s eye made me ache to the bone.”

Woodrow was taught to see animals as expendable, particularly in comparison with the supreme value of human life. However, Woodrow has a natural inclination to love animals. This quote highlights Woodrow’s perspective as special and foreshadows the passion with which he will defend the giraffes. This quote characterizes Woodrow as deeply empathetic.

“I stared after the giraffes, knowing the moment I wasn’t thinking about them I’d be forced to face my sudden return to life as a stray-dog boy. Other creatures’ miracles don’t mean a thing when you’re still working on your own. As the trucks got smaller and smaller, my wandering, wretched future got bigger and bigger.”

In this quote, Rutledge symbolizes the giraffes as Woodrow’s hope for the future. He is determined to change his life and rightly identifies that he can’t think of others if he is still trying to survive. By putting the care of the giraffes first, Woodrow can start a new chapter in his own life. He sees the giraffes as the key to a brighter future.

“The giraffes were bound for the land of milk and honey. Moses and the Chosen People couldn’t have longed for the Promised Land any more than hardscrabble farm folks longed for ‘Californy.’ Everybody knew all you had to do was find your way there without dying on the road or rail, and you’d live like a king plucking fruit from the trees and grapes from the vine.”

Here, Woodrow characterizes California as the “Promised Land.” In the 1930s, California was enjoying lucrative state development, with many citizens prospering on farms and new industrial businesses. In this novel, the California Dream is a motivating factor in the plot. Woodrow is eager to work hard, but he needs the chance to start over—he believes his dreams will come true in California.

“After the dust killed off the livestock, Dust Bowlers were eating prairie dogs and rattlesnakes and making soup from tumbleweeds. When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, that’s all life is—you’re nothing but a feral thing chasing your hunger every minute of the day.”

In this quote, Rutledge characterizes the destitution of the Dust Bowlers. She emphasizes their tragic poverty and dire situation, thus giving a foundation for Woodrow’s literal and metaphorical hunger. Woodrow is a fighter because he is “chasing [his] hunger every minute of the day.”

“Have you ever looked straight into the eyes of an animal? A tame one’s figuring you out, what you’re going to do and what that means to it. A wild one can chill you to the bone, surveying you for either supper or survival. But the gaze of that giraffe was different. It seemed to hold neither fear nor design.”

Rutledge characterizes the giraffes as both wild and tame. This implies their gentle natures despite their upbringing in the wild. This characterization makes the giraffes more loveable, proving that Riley and Woodrow are right to spend their time caring for the giraffes. Here, giraffes are characterized by their innocence and the implication of their good will. Their gentleness is emphasized consistently to give the readers a reason to fall in love with the giraffes the same way Riley and Woodrow do.

“Got you making plans and dreaming dreams in the face of a fool’s folly that hung on a couple of giraffes. You clutched it, nursed it, kept it safe and warm, because that was the only difference between you and the vacant-eyed joes aimlessly walking, dead before their time.”

Woodrow is motivated by his dreams and his ability to survive when others have perished. He is determined not to become the “vacant-eyed joes aimlessly walking.” This makes Woodrow an easy protagonist to root for. This quote also emphasizes the struggle of so many Americans in the 1930s, when people were so desperate for food and opportunity that they either foolishly dreamed up goals or became hopeless. This also highlights the stakes of the journey for Woodrow.

“Animals are complete all on their own, living by voices we don’t get to hear, having a knowing far beyond our paltry ken. And giraffes, they seem to know something more. Elephants, tigers, monkeys, zebras…whatever you feel around the rest, you feel different around giraffes. It’s sure true of these two, despite the hell they’ve been through.”

Riley is in sync with animals. Like Woodrow, he has a natural love for animals and values their souls. Here, he characterizes giraffes as particularly special because of their depth of knowledge and feeling.

“Memories stick to things. Out of nowhere, something finds your nose, ears, or eyes and you’re on the other side of the country or world or in a whole other decade, being kissed by a doe-eyed beauty or punched by a drunken pal. You’ve got no control over it, none at all. One whiff of dust whenever they clean my room and I’m back in the Panhandle staring down a brown blizzard. One glimpse of pink peonies and I’m back in WWII France, standing over a fresh battlefield grave.”

Woodrow has dual narratives in this novel. He speaks of the near past, as an older adult man, and his primary narrative is the story of his youth. Thus, memory writing is an important part of this novel. Here, Woodrow identifies the powerful pull of sensory memory. This quote highlights the importance of navigating the past and honoring this past to understand your present and prepare for your future.

“Despite what the Old Man said about the Memphis stretch being smooth sailing, I knew full well that mountains stood between us and the flat side of Tennessee. I’d never even seen a mountain, much less driven up one—much less driven a rig with two-ton giraffes over one.”

This quote emphasizes the diversity of landscape in the United States, for each state in this novel has its own culture, identity, and landscape. This quote further emphasizes the dangers inherent in driving cross-country with two giraffes, an almost absurd and miraculous journey.

“I hugged the middle stripe, trying to ignore the little crosses decorating the shoulder of the road, knowing each one was a body that didn’t make it, and I’d have wagered not a one of them had a load of jittery giraffes. With each curve I was feeling us sway. Because what do you do with that much weight going around a bend? You lean. Especially if you happen to be a giraffe.”

Driving through the mountains is an important plot twist in the novel that helps develop Woodrow’s character. Surviving the challenging roads teaches Woodrow that he is capable of almost anything. Furthermore, this quote uses a literal challenge (leaning into the curves to balance on the treacherous mountain roads) to parallel a metaphorical development. Just as the giraffes lean into the curve to keep their balance, so too does Woodrow learn how to lean into the experiences and opportunities life throws his way.

“Surrounded by such colossals, I should have felt shaky and small, yet their mammoth presence made me feel big, and calm, and sweetly safe in a way hard to describe and even harder to resist. I knew better. Yet I found myself overcome with feelings for them that I couldn’t hold back.”

This quote characterizes the giraffes as the sublime: so colossal and awesome that they inspire peaceful smallness in humans. This juxtaposition between colossal and tiny puts Woodrow’s life into perspective and inspires emotions he wants to fight back.

“Fact was I’d never seen a Black person until I was riding the rails on my way to Cuz. If there were any in my corner of the Panhandle, I didn’t know where, which to my mind made them smarter than all the White people I knew. That didn’t mean they’d be welcome, especially during the Hard Times with so many folks out of work who needed somebody to be faring worse than them.”

Chapter 8 explores the institutionalized racism inherent in American cultural thinking in the 1930s. Two major racial issues are highlighted in this quote. The first is the issue of segregation. Because Woodrow was not exposed to Black people, he can more easily internalize society’s messages about the perceived and constructed inferiority of Black people. Secondly, in a country that touts white privilege, the Great Depression was even more difficult to bear because it impoverished white people and directly challenged ideas of white supremacy. Racism and violence against the Black community grew during this time period, in part because of the white community’s inability to find a scapegoat for their failing communities.

“‘You know what circus people call those magnificent creatures? They call them rubber cows!” the Old Man sputtered. “See those poles they keep poking their ‘rubber cows’ with? They’re called bullhooks with three-inch barbed spikes! There are places on an elephant you can stick that spike to make them feel bad-bad pain, and in cheap outfits like this one, there are always measly little men who get sick pleasure out of finding those places.’ Then his voice dropped low, deadly. ‘To the point you wish elephants were like lions, ripping and reaping…to the point it can tear at your heart when they don’t…to the point that anybody with a heart can only watch a measly little man using a hook with pleasure until it’s a matter of time before anybody with a heart is going to give him a taste of that bullhook in his own measly, miserable hide.’”

This quote describes the animal abuse common to circus circuits in the 1930s. The animals were seen as expendable entertainment, valuable only in the money they could draw. The circus does not treat the animals like sentient beings, emphasizing Riley’s empathy for animals. When Riley’s voice “drops low, deadly,” Rutledge foreshadows the revelation of Riley’s dark past advocating for animals.

“With real gold hovering so near, I forgot all about the trick coin, the Old Man’s circus outbursts at the railway, and pretty much everything else. In a time when you could buy a hot dog and a soda pop for a nickel, a twenty-dollar gold piece was John D. Rockefeller. I didn’t just want it, I needed it. There was no bigger devil-deal to offer a hard-knock boy in a Hard Times world. I’d lived on tumbleweed soup and been tempted with raccoon parts cooked over crazy-hungry bums’ fire barrels.”

This quote emphasizes the spiraling nature of poverty. Woodrow has dreams and empathy, but even he cannot fight the pull of money. Money equates to survival, and Woodrow has spent years traumatized by his lack of money and food. This highlights the desperate measures people will go to survive. It is not difficult to sell away your morals, an ethical lesson Rutledge teaches her reader through Woodrow’s character development.

“Those trusting brown globes were so full of fear and confusion I felt my insides ripping apart. It was as if I were glimpsing their big giraffe souls, and they, God help me, were glimpsing the sorry state of mine, because they started clawing their fragile legs up the sides, away from me. The giraffes had seen me for the lion I was. Any second, they’d do what they do to lions. They’d kick me dead as I deserved, tumbling down the panel to do it.”

Here, Rutledge characterizes the giraffes as Woodrow’s moral voice. Woodrow faces difficult decisions about his own survival, but in the eyes of the giraffes, much more so than in the eyes of his fellow man, Woodrow criticizes his own character. The giraffes are a constant reminder of something bigger, something beyond Woodrow’s earthly suffering. Woodrow senses that if the giraffes lose their trust in him, he has truly made a deep mistake.

“A giraffe is a mighty hard thing to hide, as we already well knew. There was good reason the Old Man called outfits like his ‘fly-by-night,’ though. It was still a time of medicine shows, Bible salesmen con artists, and all manner of flimflammers leaving town under the cover of darkness, and that included one-night-stand traveling circuses. To live before the War was to believe you could be or do whatever you wanted by just moving on down the road, especially with the Hard Times turning even good people bad. Fat cats like Bowles relied on it, as much as the greed or hunger of every soul he met, and he was relying on both right then.”

As a piece of historical fiction, Rutledge must navigate the realities of the past with the absurdity of that past. For her contemporary readers, stealing or buying giraffes seems incomprehensible because it would be so difficult to hide such a transaction. Here, Woodrow emphasizes the lack of protective measures in the 1930s. People could get away with practically anything if they had money on their side. This emphasizes the desperation of the time period and explains the conflict between Percival and Riley, one powerful man against a man with much to lose. This relative lawlessness is heightened by the Mann Act and Jim Crow laws, policies that selected which American citizens to police in an era where someone like Percival could get away with stealing giraffes.

“Because here was where I would begin to grasp not only the first stink of my waffling young soul but also that destiny is a mobile thing—that every choice you make, along with every choice made around you, can cause it to spin this way and that, offering destinies galore. I had a choice to make.”

For many years, Woodrow’s life was out of his control. He could not stop the Great Depression or the Dust Bowl, he could not save his family, and he could barely find a place to start his life over again. Now, Woodrow is faced with a series of decisions that are as empowering as they are frightening. It is part of Woodrow’s character development to discover the power in decision-making, particularly because every decision Woodrow needs to make is very high stakes. Furthermore, this idea that certain choices can alter one’s future is very reminiscent of the American ethos of autonomy and hard work. Woodrow believes he can change his future, that it is up to him to make his life work. This is an American ideal that informs capitalism, individualism, and other such American philosophies.

“As I took in the whole of them, the whole of me welled up…and I let a new, clearheaded thought sprout inside my walled-off heart. If home, like Red said, was not where you came from but where you wanted to be, then the rig, the Old Man, and the giraffes were more home—and more family—than any home I’d ever had. For a stray orphaned boy, this home seemed fiercely worth holding on to, with both fists, as long as I could. No matter what might be waiting for me up the road.”

This quote highlights an important moment in Woodrow’s character development. Here, he realizes that he finally has a home, one that he has created for himself with Riley and the giraffes. The pull of home keeps Woodrow away from leaving and forging the world on his own. It takes a lot for someone as traumatized as Woodrow to love and sacrifice his own potential well-being for someone else, making this moment all the more significant.

“The sky kept drizzling, the giraffes kept bobbing, and the birds kept flying, giving the Old Man and me plenty of time to muse. I’ve been told since that there’s a name for something like it—a murmuration—a rare bird gathering that looks like a dancing cloud. Nobody ever explained the forever-flowing ribbon quite to fit my memory, though. Against the unforgiving land of my hardscrabble childhood, where the term natural wonder had no meaning, the sight filled me with a sense of exactly that—wonder.”

Symbols of freedom and hope, such as the murmuration in Oklahoma, ease the conflict in the novel and foreshadow future peace and happiness. These symbols also serve to demonstrate that life is a balance between the good and the bad. Horrible things might happen in life, but beautiful things are possible too.

“There are times in life when everything shifts so fiercely you can only hold on, the Dust Bowls and graveyards and hurricanes all forging the You, and the fury, left behind. There are other times, though, when you feel a shift down deep in your bones. Quiet, clean, pure. As we moved on that morning, shaken but alive, I felt that kind of bone-quiet shift. The fury that had ahold of me ever since shooting my pa was gone. In its grip, I thought I could rescue us. Instead I’d almost killed us. It had taken the gentlest of giraffes to save us from the fiercest of lions, and somehow Boy had melted away my fury in the doing. In the days ahead, I’d have reason to ponder whether it was gone for good. But by the time we left the outcropping’s rest stop, I’d felt free of the fury long enough to know I wanted to stay that way.”

This quote highlights Woodrow’s character development. The arduous journey, the many conflicts, and the sharing of his story with Riley frees Woodrow from his anger. Anger and guilt motivated much of Woodrow’s past life, but his journey with the giraffes dissipates that anger. This demonstrates the power of living for something bigger than oneself. This also highlights the changing nature of anger and the human resilience through even the most extreme emotions.

“The thing about knowing you’re doing something for the last time is that it takes the joy right out of it. I’ve done lots of things for the last time in my long life, but I didn’t know it. This time I’d know it. The goodbyes were near…tomorrow from Red, the next day from the giraffes.”

This quote emphasizes the importance of living in the moment, particularly because a goodbye can be a significant moment. This quote foreshadows the many goodbyes Woodrow will endure, but though goodbyes are sad, living in the moment is not always painless. Rutledge encourages her readers to lean into the pain of goodbyes because they symbolize a deep and meaningful connection.

“Rolling us to a final stop, I realized, with a last look in my mirror at the giraffes, that I was once again just a boy, on another coast, watching a sea of dungarees studying how to get two giraffes where they needed to go—a lucky boy who somehow got to tag along for the ride in between.”

Here, Woodrow sees himself as a small piece of a grander scheme. This moment is important because the experiences that take Woodrow out of his own context develop his character. Through moments like this one, Woodrow gains perspective over his trauma and his pain, inspiring resilience and hope for the future.

“But the truth is I kept up my relationships with Girl and Boy better than I did any human, family having become a word without boundaries for me.”

Despite his lessons learned about the power of human connection, Woodrow builds and maintains boundaries when it comes to human relationships. This quote emphasizes the unique depth of a relationship between human and animal. It also highlights how much Woodrow learns from the giraffes without the privilege of communication. Here, Rutledge demonstrates that relationships forged with animals can be more meaningful and powerful than ones with fellow human beings.