Talk:The Fifth Elephant

Significance of Title
Why is the novel called “The Fifth Elephant”? Where does the cover's flying “fire elephant” come from?

2007-03-21 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

Anything to do with the 1997 movie The Fifth Element?

That was my first assosiation when I saw the title. However, is it much more likely to have something to do with four elephants the Discworld rests on. Anyone who know?

2007-06-01 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.


 * There are several possibilities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Element_%28disambiguation%29 provides some of them.  And the fifth element in the context of the novel could be fat, but I don't think we'll ever know for sure unless Pratchett speaks up!  Geoff B 09:48, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

That reference does not help me at all.

2007-06-05 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.


 * The title is almost certainly a punning reference to The Fifth Element. Pratchett has based many Discworld titles on movie titles - the first in the series The Colour Of Magic is obviously a play on the movie The Color Of Money. The novels are generally full of puns and incongruous references to cultural phenomena, particularly British cultural phenomena. As an example, this novel contains a reference to a British TV ad for Ferrero Rocher chocolates which must be incomprehensible to non-Brits, never mind people who don't have English as a first language. --80.176.142.11 (talk) 23:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Origin Of The Fifth Elephant
The land of Discworld rests on the back of four gigantic elephants. It is rumoured that there had been a fifth, which slipped, flipped and landed on Discworld, literally becoming part of the geography. Lots42 20:01, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

This explanation are inconsistent with the cover’s flying “fire elephant”.

2007-12-08 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.229.19.152 (talk) 20:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

It is quite consistent. The Discworld has an earth-like atmosphere, so any large space object impacting the Disc would be inflamed by friction, as meteoroids hitting earth are. Compare the dinosaur-killing rock leaving the iridium-rich K-T boundary all around earth with that huge space-elephant leaving all his fat below Überwald. --85.182.11.149 (talk) 05:08, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The Last Hero may be adding to this theory of the Fifth Elephant by stating the moon and the sun are Elephant dung (the dung beetle pushing the sun (one of many Ancient Egyptian beliefs on the sun) was also referenced in Pyramids,--75.6.175.177 (talk) 03:44, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

New plot summary
In my opinion the old summary was written too much in an in-universe style and resembled some commercial blurb. I replaced it with one of my own, wherein I tried to keep the tone more 'encyclopedic'. Will elaborate on that if requested. Comments welcome. --85.182.8.151 (talk) 21:54, 13 October 2008 (UTC)