Summary
The animals can smell in the air that a new animal is on the way. They are curious about what kind of animal it will be. While waiting, Stella rubs her swollen foot and tells a story about Jambo, a gorilla in a zoo who didn’t attack a human boy who fell into the gorilla domain. Ivan is not surprised, and doesn’t understand why people would expect a gorilla to kill an injured boy. Bob asks what a zoo is. With their larger enclosures, Stella believes zoos are how humans make amends.
The new arrival is Ruby, a baby elephant. Ivan is pleased for Stella, but he sees Stella is not glad at all. Mack says aloud that Ruby will help the circus make money. Ivan reassures Stella that it will be okay, and she says it will never, ever be okay. Ruby doesn’t want to leave the truck, so Mack lets Stella out to help coax the baby elephant to move. Stella catches her swollen foot on the ramp of the truck and blood trickles out. After Stella gets Ruby to leave the truck, Mack raises a broom and threatens the elephants until they get into their cage, where they entwine their trunks.
Ivan is jealous of the attention the baby elephant is garnering with her cuteness. He pouts when Julia draws the elephant, neglecting him. At night, Stella tells Ivan that Ruby is too thin; she was born in the wild before being taken by a circus, and then Mack bought her from the circus. Just like Stella, in the circus she was chained to the floor and her spirit was broken as she was made to balance on a pedestal. In the morning they meet Ruby, who wonders where the other elephants are. She discusses her family members, who were killed by humans. Once Stella wakes up, Ivan is pleased to see how the two elephants dance, and entwine their trunks happily. Ivan sees men add to the freeway billboard: it’s a baby elephant that looks nothing like Ruby.
Ruby asks Ivan questions about his art. He says that when he draws he feels quiet inside. At night, George brings Stella a treat and tells Mack to inspect Stella’s infected foot. Mack says money’s tight and he can’t call the vet every time Stella sneezes. Ruby wakes the animals up early in the morning. Ivan entertains her by drawing pictures, and it makes him feel good. Stella and Ivan discussing parenting: Stella says she never had babies herself, but she would have liked to. They agree that the hardest part of parenting would be keeping babies safe from harm.
While cleaning the windows, Mack and George discuss how there are more cars than usual in the parking lot. With the altered billboard, more visitors have been coming to see Ruby. Ivan doesn’t know whether to be happy or sad.
Julia notices that Stella’s condition has worsened: she is lying in a pile of hay, breathing slowly. Julia tells George, and George tells Mack, who says he’ll call the vet in the morning. In the middle of the night, Stella wakes Ivan to ask him to promise that he’ll take care of Ruby. He does. Before anyone else, Ivan knows Stella has died.
Bob hears from a rat that Stella’s body was chucked into a garbage truck; it took five men and a forklift to move her. Ivan doesn’t know how to comfort Ruby. Bob promises Ruby that Ivan will save her, but Ivan doesn’t know how he could. In the night, Ruby goes to Ivan and says she misses Aunt Stella, along with the rest of her family. She asks for a story, but Ivan says he doesn’t remember things. But after listening to Ruby sob for a few minutes, Ivan begins to tell the story of a gorilla named Ivan.
He was born in a dense rain forest in central Africa. His twin sister was named Tag because she liked to play tag. Every day Ivan made pictures using mud and sap and fruit juice. His parents named him Mud. His family—or troop—was like any gorilla group. He and Tag were the babies, and their father kept everyone in line. He learned from his parents how to be a gorilla, and it was a perfect life. Then humans came and took Tag and him in a dark crate.
Mack opened the crate and raised him like a human baby. Ivan wore diapers and drank from a bottle. He broke many objects while living with Mack and his wife Helen. They took him to fast-food restaurants, baseball games, the grocery store. It was a glamorous life, but he longed for the comforts of the wild. One day Helen brought home a still life painting of fruit. Mack didn’t care for the painting but Ivan loved it. Ivan made a painting using icing from a cake and the blank fridge door. He wanted to be an artist again, but after that, he was never allowed in the kitchen. Mack started bringing Ivan to the mall in a tuxedo. People held him in their laps.
Helen packed a bag and left Mack, who grew sullen. Meanwhile, Ivan grew bigger, too large for chairs and hugs and human life. He tried to move with dignity, but it was difficult to be like a human. When he was given his domain, he was thrilled by his tire swing and the lack of furniture and objects he had to worry about breaking. He didn’t realize how long he’d be there. Some days, while drinking Pepsi and watching TV, Ivan forgets whether he’s supposed to be a human or a gorilla. He comments that humans have many words, but no name for what he is. Ruby and Bob fall asleep while listening to Ivan’s life story. Ivan comments that he has forgotten so many things but keeps track of every day of his life with humans, using a Magic Marker to make Xs on the wall.
Analysis
Although Stella is upset that Mack has bought a baby elephant to bring more customers, she cares for Ruby, entwining her trunk and acting as a maternal figure. Ruby’s history touches on the themes of animal confinement and animal mistreatment: like Stella, Ruby was poached from the wild and made to perform in a circus before being sold off to Mack. Ruby casually states that her parents were killed by humans: her delivery exposes the extent to which her development has been deformed by the trauma of how she has been mistreated.
Ruby’s incessant questioning forces Ivan to consider why he likes making art. He reflects that artistic expression makes him feel quiet inside; though he does not have the vocabulary to articulate it, it is clear that Ivan’s art-making is a form of therapy to help him deal with the trauma of his mistreatment and confinement.
The theme of animal mistreatment continues as Stella’s condition worsens and Mack neglects her care. Her death also brings the theme of absent mother figures to the fore: with Stella gone, Ruby is lost and only has Ivan to console her. Ivan’s solution is to tell a story, a mode of artistic expression that is also another major theme.
Ivan’s need to tell Ruby a story forces him to confront his own history. It turns out that Stella was right: it is not that he is bad at remembering, it is that he didn’t want to remember. He recalls how Mack and his wife Helen raised Ivan as they would a human child, which is where he first learned to act more like a human than a gorilla, and developed a taste for human junk food and treats.
As Ivan grew too large to keep at home, Helen and Mack’s relationship ended. With Helen gone, Ivan lost another maternal figure, and Mack turned to drinking. He brought Ivan to live at the mall, where he has lived ever since. Having adopted human habits, Ivan is uncertain of his identity as a gorilla. Like a prisoner marking the days on the walls of his cell, Ivan makes Xs to count how long he has spent in captivity, which works out to twenty-seven years.
