The short story "Faithful Elephants," by Yukio Tsuchiya teaches readers that life isn't always fair. In the story, the zookeepers had to kill the animals in the zoo, bombs were being dropped on the zoo, and and the three elephants, John, Tonky, and Wanly were starved because the trainers could find no other way to kill them, which they had to do. All of these events in the story were extremely unfair to both the people and the animals.

In the story, the zookeepers at Ueno Zoo had to kill all of the potentially "dangerous" animals in the zoo. They were taking precaution in case a bomb was dropped on the zoo and the animals escaped, which could be very dangerous to both the animals and the people nearby. "What would happen if bombs hit the zoo? If the cages were broken and dangerous animals escaped to run wild through the city, it would be terrible! Therefore, by command of the army, all of the lions, tigers, leopards, bears, and big snakes were poisoned to death." It wasn't the animals' faults that there was the possibility of bombs being dropped on the zoo, and yet they were being killed because of it. This was very unfair to the animals. This was also very unfair to the trainers. "All this while, the elephants' trainer loved them as if they were his own children. He could only pace in front of the cage and moan, 'You poor, poor, pitiful elephants!'" The trainers loved these animals, and now they had to kill them JUST IN CASE a bomb was dropped on the zoo.

In the story, the three elephants, John, Tonky, and Wanly had to be killed along with the rest of the "dangerous" animals. But, since they were too smart to be poisoned and their skin was too tough to be given a syringe that would kill them quickly, they had to be starved to death. "The keepers reluctantly decided to starve him to death. Poor John died seventeen days later." It wasn't the elephants' faults that there was no other way for them to be killed, and yet they had to die an extremely slow an painful death because of it.

In "Faithful Elephants," we are taught that life can be very unfair. The text had lots of evidence for this moral: the zookeepers had to kill their beloved animals, the elephants were starved to death, and there were bombs being dropped all over Japan. This story teaches us that, although we wish it could be, sometimes life is very unfair.

Over the summer, I read the book "The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think one of the themes of the book is dissatisfaction. All of the main characters in the book should be satisfied with what they have, and yet they still want more.
Gatsby is rich, famous, and loved by so many people, and yet he decides that he has to have Daisy love him again. And even after she tells both him and Tom that she loves Gatsby, Gatsby forces her to tell Tom that she had never loved him, and that she had always loved Gatsby. Even when Gatsby had gotten what he said he wanted most (Daisy's love), he pushes his luck and makes her admit to never loving Tom. This shows that Gatsby is never fully satisfied, even though he got exactly what he thought he wanted in the first place.
Daisy had everything she thought she wanted: a rich, handsome husband, a huge house and all the dresses she could possibly want, but she needed more. She needed to have both Tom and Gatsby love her, so she would never have to choose between them. Even though she could've stayed with Gatsby before she even met Tom, and she could've been happily married to Tom, she had to have them both. This shows that no matter who she chose, she thought she would be even more unhappy, so she chose both thinking that this way, she would never have to regret her decision.
The wealthy people in this book were often careless, unhappy, and dissatisfied. Even though they thought they knew exactly what they wanted and what they would be happy with, they didn't actually know, and this made all of their problems worse. No matter what they thought would satisfy them, it always ended up dissatisfying them even more.