Elephant In The Living Room / Literature

Elephants in the Living Room in Literature.

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• In the original Arthur Adventure book series, personally written & illustrated by Marc Brown, both the Tibble Twins and Mrs. Tibble are humans. It's never remarked upon and no one finds it strange. Of course, this was changed in the animated series.
• The old variation in which the elephant-in-the-living-room analogy is used in reference to the obviousness of drug addiction/alcoholism is addressed in two different books of The Dark Tower. In one Stephen King says that the reaction loved ones of the addiction have upon discovering the elephant (addiction) was there is usually, "Oh, I'm sorry, was that an elephant? It was there when I moved in! I always assumed it was part of the furniture!" In the other King makes the analogy: that the reason the addict himself/herself doesn't see the "elephant in the living room" is because this elephant isn't just any ordinary elephant; it is like The Shadow in that it has the hypnotic super-ability to cloud men's minds so as to appear invisible to them.
• The Douglas Adams novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency features a man at a university with a very long nose. He never speaks, and is never spoken to because people are too startled by the sight of his nose, and don't want to bring it up. He also constantly taps his fingers and makes other odd gestures, and nobody asks why due to their reluctance to speak to him. Finally one character ends up addressing him after accidentally knocking on his door. The man stops twitching and calmly announces that nobody has spoken to him in almost two decades (quoting the exact time to the second). Apparently all the gestures were him counting the seconds.
  • The sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul features the Norse god Thor. He complains to the female protagonist, Kate Schecter, that even though gods walk among humans, no one notices them.
    Thor: If I walk along one of your streets in this... world you have made for yourselves without us, then barely an eye will once flicker in my direction.
    Kate: Is this when you're wearing the helmet?
    Thor: Especially when I'm wearing the helmet!
• Discworld:
  • One of the Canting Crew is a beggar named Duck Man, for the very simple reason that he has a duck on his head. Most people don't mention the duck out of politeness, and those who do bring it up will be met with the response "What duck?" It's mentioned that he used to be quite normal "before everyone else started seeing ducks".
  • Another member of the Canting Crew is Altogether Andrews, who has several split personalities, none of which is named Andrews. This is never brought up.
  • To a lesser extent, Shawn Ogg's parentage is this. His father is publicly accepted to be Sobriety Ogg. The only problem with this idea is that Sobriety Ogg died some ten years before Shawn was born. Most people avoid the issue (probably out of fear of Nanny) and are quick to silence outsiders who try to mention it.
  • Death himself is visible to all inhabitants of the Discworld, but he is so frightening in his appearance that most people unconsciously choose not to notice anything strange about him to preserve their sanity, even when having a conversation with him.
  • Dwarves don't identify themselves as male or female and never even discuss in public that there are female dwarves. When the more progressive Ankh-Morpork dwarves start ignoring this taboo, it takes multiple books to avoid a civil war. It's mentioned that mating rituals among dwarves mostly involve attempting to surreptitiously verify what sex the other dwarf is.
  • There's also the Librarian of Unseen University, who is an orangutan due to a magical accident. People found it odd at first but now barely think about it. It's been said that if someone told the staff that there was an ape on campus they'd go ask the Librarian if he'd seen it.
  • It does come up with people outside the university - they have no idea how anyone can understand what the librarian is saying ("oook." vs "oook?"), and the wizards reply they've never had an issue.
• In the Dragaera series, Dragaerans who are the offspring of two or more Houses are the objects of prejudice, pity, or mistrust by the vast majority of the Empire's nobility, who regard such inter-House miscegenation with contempt and disgust. Yet nobody ever mentions that Sethra Lavode is older than the Houses, so she's not a pureblooded member of any House.
  • Most contemporary people don't know how old she is; she's currently a somewhat mythical figure. And as the Houses antedate the bloodlines (they're mostly a recognition of the wildly varying species which were all engineered into biologically similar and interfertile Dragaerans), Sethra comes closer to being pureblooded than the current generations. Whether she shares a bloodline with House Dzur or one of the tribes which died out before the Empire is unclear; she herself simply doesn't seem to care (or seem willing to share; effectively the same thing).
• Terry Kettering is the Trope Namer if not Trope Maker with his poem the "Elephant in the Room".
• Fire & Blood: The topic of Rhaenyra's first three children. They look very distinctly unlike their supposed father, who is himself a pretty transparent homosexual, but they do look amazingly like they could be the sons of Harwin Strong, Rhaenyra's former lover (who died under sketchy circumstances). Of course, no-one says anything because this would throw the issue of succession into serious question and mean accusing the king's beloved daughter of treason. And then Rhae's half-brother Aemond gets into a fight with them over insults to their parentage, and his father demands to know where he heard the rumor. Aemond's brother responds "everyone knows". After this, Viserys lays down the law; anyone calling Rhaenyra's sons bastard will lose their tongues.
• The Ernest Hemingway short story "Hills Like White Elephants" follows a couple talking at a train station, with the man attempting to convince the woman to have an abortion. The actual nature of the operation he's pressing, however, and the reason for it are conspicuously never mentioned.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Life, the Universe and Everything, uses this as a form of Invisibility Cloak, called the "Somebody Else's Problem Field", which relies on "people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain". This renders Slartibartfast's spaceship, which is described as resembling an Italian bistro with fins and engines, invisible to bystanders.
  • It's perfectly visible to whomever the "Somebody Else" in question is, however; in this case, it's Arthur Dent.
• Hurog: In Dragon Bones, the abusiveness of the recently deceased Lord Fenwick is never mentioned by the adults, the worst that others say about him was that he was something of a jerk. Neither is the fact that Fenwick and Duraugh are the only surviving of eight children, and that's because they were sent away to foster care. The protagonist, Ward, thinks about this, but no one says it. It remains unclear whether the other children died because the grandfather was abusive, too, or whether it's the family curse. Maybe both. Likewise, no one ever talks about the adultery that Fenwick and his father committed, the bastards are euphemistically called "cousins", although everyone knows what they really are. Ward has his blind spots, too - he complains that his mother was never able to protect him, but the fact that his beloved aunt Stala, who was a lot stronger, both mentally and physically, didn't protect him either, is not mentioned. And uncle Duraugh also gets off scot-free, even though he spent a lot of time on the Hurog estate, and acted like best buddies with his jerkass brother.
• The In Death series: Roarke finds out in Divided in Death that the Homeland Security Organization was monitoring Richard Troy, Eve's father. They knew that she was with him, and that he was raping her, but they sat back and did nothing. Roarke tells Eve that he intends to hunt them down and make them pay for this. Eve wants him to leave it alone. So they try to ignore it and focus on other matters. Later, he brings it up, and Eve can only think "Here it was. The big glowing elephant in the room that she hoped to ignore. And it was trumpeting."
• A more serious example can be found in Invisible Man, in which characters do their very best not to bring up the subject of race relations.
• Everyone in The Kingkiller Chronicle conspicuously avoids the topic of how the Living Legend Kvothe ended up a powerless Broken Ace running an unsuccessful inn while he waits to die.
• The presence of the Judeo-Christian God and His Son Jesus Christ are treated like this by the Only Light subsect in the Left Behind book Kingdom Come, when people in the Millennial Kingdom would have to be complete idiots to ever think They don't exist.
• A fairly common interpretation of King Arthur's actions in Le Morte D Arthur is that he knows that Lancelot is sleeping with Guinevere, or has at least heard the rumors, but refuses to address the issue because he knows the damage it will cause. The rest of the court seems similarly inclined, because even while they circulate rumors they never address the king with their suspicions. At least not until Agravain decides he wants more space in the room.
  • The Once and Future King is more explicit about King Arthur knowing about the affair but staying silent. There are some very good scenes with the three of them carefully not mentioning it.
  • The alternative theory (which the RSC theatrical adaptation implies) is that he's become so oblivious to Guinevere as a person he barely notices what she's doing most of the time.
  • Later in the final book, Arthur is actually said to be willing to forgive Lancelot for all of this, but Gawaine won't let him because Lancelot accidentally killed Gareth.
• In Murderess, Hallwad and Aucasis never discuss the horrors Aucasis went through in the Dark Ones’ tunnels before her rescue.
• In a brief scene in the first Percy Jackson and the Olympians book, the existence of the Judeo-Christian God is treated like this. All that Chiron is willing to say is that it's a "metaphysical" debate and that the existence of the Olympians is a "much smaller matter". The implication is that even the Olympians are just as clueless as mortals are regarding whether there is an all-powerful being above them or not.
  • Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard is a bit braver by introducing Samirah al Abbas, who worships God over the Norse gods (as a Muslim, she views them as simply genies). However, the matter is still inconclusive since Sam basically veers into a Flat-Earth Atheist: she refuses to worship the gods despite fully understanding that they have godlike powers. When Magnus (a self-described atheist) asks her about this, Sam says that it reinforces her belief in God even more, as, unlike the Norse gods, He doesn't make Himself known to mortals and never try to interfere with their lives.
• In Shades of Grey, the state of Chromatacia is governed by Munsell's Rules, which also specify what does and does not exist. If you see something with your own eyes, something that should not exist according to Munsell, then you just pretend you didn't see it. If you absolutely must refer to it (say, to warn others about speaking of it) then you call it "apocryphal". The town of East Carmine has an apocryphal man. He regularly steals food from others' houses in broad daylight, and no one will stop him for fear of breaking the rules by acknowledging his existence.
• In Shaman Blues, the spirits following Gardiasz seem to have this status. They never speak, Witkacy has no idea who they are and why they're following the lord of the afterlife, and the one time he asked, his relations with Gardiasz soured permanently.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, the incest between Cersei and Jaime is this trope after King Robert's death. Initially, it was known only to a few people who had spies or performed some research (Varys, Littlefinger, Renly, Stannis, and Jon Arryn). However, after the end of the first book where the Lannisters have performed a coup and killed Robert and Ned, Stannis sends letters all across Westeros with the news of incest. While the fact is known to even the Lannisters' allies, it's something that can't be discussed because the reveal of the incest would result in the whole reign of Joffrey (and later Tommen) being considered illegitimate and treasonous. So, people like Margaery will occasionally make a snide comment, but in whole the discussion is avoided lest the whole Lannister/Tyrell regime collapse. However, it's looking like that's going to happen anyway with Cersei's incompetence.
• In The Spirit Thief, there are three rules the Shepherdess set down that all spirits must obey: don't look at the sky, don't ask about the stuff you see in the sky, and never, ever mention stars. By the fifth book, the elephant becomes so conspicuous, the Shaper Mountain goes "screw it" and explains everything to Slorn and Miranda.
• The Twilight Saga: Stephenie Meyer invoked this when a fan asked why Bella never seemed to menstruate, then got pregnant with demon spawn after having sex once. Or if she did menstruate, why didn't her vampire boyfriend eat her? The author seemed to be disgusted by the entire idea, though some people still think the question was an excellent point.
  • The Official Illustrated Guide eventually explained in its FAQ that the blood from a woman's period isn't freshly oxygenated blood flowing from the heart, like blood from a cut would be, and thus doesn't elicit the same reaction.
  • It's also an in-universe elephant in the room - according to the same question, Bella apparently did have periods in the earlier books but was too embarrassed to ask about a vampire's reaction to it, while Edward was fully aware but too much of a gentleman to bring up the subject.
• In Sharon Creech's The Wanderer, Sophie blocks out any and all notions that she is adopted and her biological parents are dead, even though everyone knows this to be the case.
• In Watership Down, there's one rabbit warren that lives in uneasy peace with the human whose land they live on. Rather than chasing the rabbits away, the human leaves food out to make sure the rabbits are well-fed—and he occasionally sets a single trap out, then cooks the rabbit that gets caught. The rabbits, at some point in the past, decided this was an acceptable trade-off. So they live there, and they never talk about the traps.
• Played for Drama in The World According to Garp; after the car accident, the reader gradually notices that while we know what happened to everyone else, no-one's mentioned Walt. It's eventually revealed that he died, and his parents are too distraught to talk about him.

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