The Zookeeper's Wife Essay

Benjamin Franklin, an American politician, once said, “There never was a good war or bad peace”. This expresses the importance of peace and the problems that war brings. The war story, The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman, takes place in Warsaw, Poland, during World War II. It mainly follows Antonina, a woman who cares for a zoo with her husband Jan, a zookeeper. When war breaks out, they are forced to leave their happy life and flee in order to survive. The war is violent and impacts the animals, environment, and people in negative ways.
It is bizarre how the animals’ behavior changes throughout the story. In the beginning, the zoo was a paradise and the animals made sounds that expressed how safe and content they felt. Sounds such as “the hyenas gibbering, the lions roaring, the ravens croaking, the peacocks screeching, the rhino snorting,” (20) can be heard at the zoo before the war. The zoo was a happy place filled with content animals. These natural noises show how comfortable

Before, Antonina “greeted distinguished guests from Poland and abroad and welcomed press or government officials”.There was interest in the zoo from various parts of the world and Antonina would guide them. Guests would be able to enjoy seeing different habitats for the animals. However, after the war, “everyone hurried through clouds of flying dirt, the unlucky fell and the relatively lucky fled beneath splattering machine-gun fire”. People are more busy worrying about their lives to be traveling or enjoying themselves. Antonina is more often fleeing to different places than guiding visitors at the zoo anymore. Away from the zoo, she has to worry about getting through the day without getting killed, instead of making sure every day is enjoyable. This applies to everyone who is in the middle of a war. The constant chaos of the war has turned the peoples’ lives into an earthquake, obliterating everything they knew