Leaving Time
“Leaving Time” by Jodi Picoult is a gripping novel that intertwines mystery, grief, and the bond between humans and elephants. The story follows Jenna Metcalf, a 13-year-old girl searching for her mother, Alice, a renowned elephant researcher who disappeared a decade earlier under mysterious circumstances. With the help of a skeptical psychic and a disgraced detective, Jenna uncovers buried secrets about her mother’s work and the tragic events at an elephant sanctuary. The novel explores themes of memory, loss, and maternal love, while weaving in fascinating insights into elephant behavior and emotions. Picoult blends emotional depth with suspense, culminating in a surprising twist that redefines the narrative.
Chapter 36: Alice
byPicoult, Jodi
The chapter explores the profound impact of trauma on elephant behavior, contrasting their typical ability to compartmentalize death with exceptional cases where grief manifests destructively. One striking example involves an orphaned female calf raised by young bulls, who later treated her own offspring with the same neglect she had experienced. Without the guidance of a matriarchal herd, she failed to develop proper maternal instincts, unlike young females in breeding herds who practice caregiving as “allomothers” long before motherhood. This highlights how the absence of traditional family structures disrupts natural behavioral development in elephants.
A parallel case emerges with young male elephants in Pilanesberg, who exhibited abnormally aggressive behavior—charging vehicles and killing rhinos—after witnessing their families slaughtered during culling operations. The chapter identifies a common thread: both the neglectful mother and violent bulls lacked parental guidance and endured the trauma of seeing their families killed. Unlike natural deaths, which herds process collectively, human-inflicted mass killings leave survivors without social support systems, exacerbating long-term psychological damage.
The author critiques the scientific community’s reluctance to acknowledge trauma’s role in elephant behavior, suggesting political shame plays a part since humans perpetrate these violent acts. They argue that grief following violent human actions differs fundamentally from responses to natural death, as the former destroys the very social networks elephants rely on for emotional recovery. This distinction underscores how anthropogenic trauma creates irreversible behavioral ruptures in elephant societies.
Concluding with a poignant observation, the chapter emphasizes that while death is natural, murder is an unnatural disruption with cascading consequences. The author calls for greater recognition of how human violence against elephants creates complex trauma, challenging researchers to confront uncomfortable truths about our species’ role in destabilizing elephant social ecosystems. This perspective reframes elephant grief studies by centering the ethical implications of human actions.
FAQs
1. What is the key difference between how elephants process natural death versus violent death by humans, according to the chapter?
Answer:
The chapter highlights a crucial distinction in elephant grief processing. After a natural death (like an old matriarch passing), the herd supports the grieving individual and encourages them to eventually move on. However, violent deaths caused by humans (like culling or poaching) typically leave no surviving herd members to provide support. The text emphasizes that witnessing violent family deaths creates long-term behavioral impacts absent in natural death scenarios, as seen in the Zambian calf and Pilanesberg bulls’ abnormal behaviors. The author suggests this trauma response is systematically overlooked due to human culpability in these violent events.2. How does the chapter use the Zambian orphaned calf’s story to illustrate the importance of elephant socialization?
Answer:
The Zambian calf case demonstrates how disrupted socialization leads to generational trauma. Orphaned by poaching, the female calf grew up among young bulls who tolerated but didn’t properly socialize her. Without maternal guidance or allomother experience (where young females practice caregiving in breeding herds), she replicated neglectful behaviors with her own calf at age ten. The chapter contrasts this with normal herd dynamics where juveniles practice caregiving for 15 years, even pretending to nurse calves. This example proves elephants require multigenerational socialization to develop proper parenting skills, and that trauma disrupts this cultural knowledge transfer.3. What parallel does the author draw between the Pilanesberg bulls’ behavior and human psychology?
Answer:
The author implicitly connects the Pilanesberg bulls’ abnormal aggression (charging vehicles, killing rhinos and tourists) to human-like trauma responses. These translocated bulls, having witnessed family killings during culling operations, displayed “highly aggressive behavior that was far from normal.” This mirrors how human children exposed to violence often develop behavioral issues. The text suggests elephants, like humans, can develop pathological behaviors when raised without proper social structures after trauma. The political reluctance to acknowledge this parallel, as noted in the chapter, stems from humans being the perpetrators of the original violence.4. Why does the author argue that current elephant grief research may be biased?
Answer:
The author contends that scientific reluctance to link elephant trauma with observed behavioral abnormalities stems from “political shame rather than scientific objection.” Since humans cause the violent deaths (through culling/poaching) that destroy elephant social structures, acknowledging the long-term psychological impacts would require confronting human culpability. The text criticizes this bias by contrasting observable trauma responses (like the Zambian calf’s neglect or Pilanesberg bulls’ aggression) with the research community’s preference to study only “natural” grief scenarios that don’t implicate human actions.5. How might the chapter’s insights change elephant conservation approaches?
Answer:
The chapter implies conservation strategies must account for elephants’ complex psychosocial needs. Traditional approaches focusing solely on physical survival (translocating orphaned calves or culling survivors) fail to address trauma-induced behavioral cascades. Effective conservation would require: 1) preserving intact social herds to maintain cultural knowledge, 2) providing surrogate allomothers for orphans, and 3) recognizing that human-caused violence creates unique, lasting damage compared to natural mortality. The Pilanesberg case particularly suggests that traumatized elephant groups may need rehabilitation beyond physical relocation to prevent dangerous behaviors.
Quotes
1. “All this time, I’ve said that elephants have an uncanny ability to compartmentalize death, without letting grief cripple them permanently. But there is an exception.”
This opening statement introduces the chapter’s central theme - that while elephants typically process grief differently from humans, traumatic deaths (like poaching) create exceptions to this rule. It sets up the contrast between natural and violent death that the chapter explores.
2. “When there is no family to teach a young female to raise her own calf, things can go horribly awry.”
This quote encapsulates one of the chapter’s key insights about elephant social structures. It demonstrates how the loss of multigenerational knowledge transmission leads to abnormal behavior, using the poignant example of maternal neglect in orphaned elephants.
3. “After a natural death, the herd encourages the grieving individual to eventually move on. After a mass killing by humans, there is—by definition—no herd left for support.”
This powerful contrast highlights the chapter’s main argument about different types of grief. It shows how human-caused trauma creates uniquely devastating consequences by destroying the very support systems elephants rely on for processing loss.
4. “To date, the animal research community has been reluctant to believe that elephant behavior might be affected by the trauma of watching one’s family being killed. I think this isn’t scientific objection as much as it is political shame—after all, we humans have been the perpetrators of this violence.”
This bold statement represents the chapter’s critical perspective on scientific discourse. It calls out the ethical dimensions of elephant research and suggests researchers’ discomfort stems from human culpability in creating these traumas.
5. “At the very least, it is crucial when studying the grief of elephants to remember that death is a natural occurrence. Murder is not.”
This concluding statement serves as the chapter’s thesis. It draws a clear moral distinction between natural processes and human-inflicted violence, urging researchers and readers to consider this fundamental difference in understanding elephant behavior.