Art helps Ivan deal with his lonely, dull existence in the small mall cage, but unlike Julia, Ivan can only draw what he sees in front of him, not what he imagines.Īll the animals at the mall experience a huge shift in their existence when a baby elephant, Ruby, arrives at the mall. Ivan and Julia are both artists, and after Julia slips a paper and crayon through the hole in Ivan’s cage, Ivan creates drawings the mall owner Mack sells. He is also friends with the 10-year-old human Julia, daughter of the mall janitor George. Ivan lives in a cage with three windowed walls, so he can see the mall and the billboard that depicts him as “The One and Only Ivan, Mighty Silverback.” While Ivan does have the silver patch of a mature male gorilla on his back, he does not consider himself a true silverback, a leader and protector of his troop, for he has “no one to protect” (10).Īt the mall, Ivan lives with his animal companions Stella, an elderly elephant who was once part of a famous circus, and Bob, a stray dog who sleeps on Ivan’s chest at night. In the opening of the novel, Ivan describes his life at the mall where he has lived for 27 years, after humans captured him and ripped him away from an African childhood he barely remembers.
Like the real Ivan, the novel’s main character lives in a mall, the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, where he is billed as the “One and Only Ivan” as part of the mall’s daily circus. In her novel, Applegate transforms Ivan into a fictional gorilla who can understand and speak human language, and who tells his story through a series of short, poetic vignettes.
The One and Only Ivan is based on the true story of a gorilla named Ivan, who was captured from the Democratic Republic of Congo and spent 27 years living in a cage in a mall before he was moved to Zoo Atlanta in 1994.
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