Discussion Question Blog Post #2

Going back to the prologue, now that we know the characters quite well, discuss who you think killed who and analyze why.

From left to right: August, Jacob and Marlena.

Marlena kills August. In the prologue, there is a description of a female with crazed-looking eyes, killing a man. Splitting his head open with a stake, to be exact. Now that we have learned more about the characters and their feelings for each other, we can make an educated guess about who killed who. We have just learned that Marlena does in fact love Jacob, and we have known for a while that Jacob is deeply in love with Marlena. August discovers this and goes insane. He starts to beat Marlena and Jacob and call them offensive things. August has recently started using a silver-tipped cane and wearing a silk hat. After all the beating and name calling August has done to Marlena, Jacob and to Rosie the elephant, Marlena has a right to want August dead. In this quote we see a description of what seems to be August, "That son of a bitch was standing with his back to her, red-faced and bellowing, flapping his arms and swinging his silver-tipped cane. His high-topped silk hat laying on the straw beside him" (4). This is enough information for us to assume this is August. "She lifted the stake high in the air and brought it down, splitting his head in half like a watermelon. His face pated open, his eyes grew wide, and his mouth froze into an O. He fell onto his knees and then toppled forward into the straw" (4). This shows Marlena killing August after everything he has out her through. 

The description of Marlena killing August further proves that Jacob is a better fit for her, as I argued in my last post, because for her to kill August, he must have don't terrible things to her.