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The Woman at the Party
The mayor of the town in which the story takes place. After the town’s zoo closes and the story’s titular elephant is left abandoned, the mayor agrees that the town will take ownership of the animal in a deal negotiated with the zoo’s former owners and the developers who purchased the zoo’s land. Though the mayor ostensibly cares more for the elephant’s wellbeing than the townspeople (particularly the opposition party who would just as soon have the elephant euthanized), he is primarily interested in using the homeless elephant as the town’s symbol and projecting an altruistic and politically favorable image.
The Mayor Quotes in The Elephant Vanishes
The The Elephant Vanishes quotes below are all either spoken by The Mayor or refer to The Mayor. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Elephant Vanishes
Quotes
The longer the elephant problem remained unsolved, the more interest the developer had to pay for nothing. Still, simply killing the thing would have been out of the question. If it had been a spider monkey or a bat, they might have been able to get away with it, but the killing of an elephant would have been too hard to cover up, and if it ever came out afterward, the repercussions would have been tremendous.
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On its right rear leg, the elephant wore a solid, heavy-looking steel cuff from which there stretched a thick chain perhaps thirty feet long, and this in turn was securely fastened to a concrete slab. Anyone could see what a sturdy anchor held the beast in place: The elephant could have struggled with all its might for a hundred years and never broken the thing.
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Riddled as it was with such perplexities and labored circumlocutions, the newspaper article as a whole left but one possible conclusion: The elephant had not escaped. It had vanished. Needless to say, however, neither the newspaper nor the police nor the mayor was willing to admit—openly, at least—that the elephant had vanished.
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The Mayor Quotes in The Elephant Vanishes
The The Elephant Vanishes quotes below are all either spoken by The Mayor or refer to The Mayor. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Elephant Vanishes
Quotes
The longer the elephant problem remained unsolved, the more interest the developer had to pay for nothing. Still, simply killing the thing would have been out of the question. If it had been a spider monkey or a bat, they might have been able to get away with it, but the killing of an elephant would have been too hard to cover up, and if it ever came out afterward, the repercussions would have been tremendous.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
On its right rear leg, the elephant wore a solid, heavy-looking steel cuff from which there stretched a thick chain perhaps thirty feet long, and this in turn was securely fastened to a concrete slab. Anyone could see what a sturdy anchor held the beast in place: The elephant could have struggled with all its might for a hundred years and never broken the thing.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Riddled as it was with such perplexities and labored circumlocutions, the newspaper article as a whole left but one possible conclusion: The elephant had not escaped. It had vanished. Needless to say, however, neither the newspaper nor the police nor the mayor was willing to admit—openly, at least—that the elephant had vanished.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
