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The book centres around protagonist Sam Vimes, the Commander of Ankh-Morpork's City Watch (and technically also a Duke), being sent on a diplomatic trade mission to Uberwald, a lawless and uncharted area where power is spread among primarily werewolves, vampires and dwarfs.

Vimes considers himself first and foremost a policeman, not a politician, and he hates everything about this mission. Shenanigans ensue, mainly concerning the missing Scone of Stone, a very important political object for the dwarfs.

The titular Fifth Elephant refers to a myth. The Discworld is a flat planet held up by four elephants on top of a great cosmic turtle. The myth goes that there was a fifth elephant that crashed into the world, and various parts of it became rich minerals - iron, gold, and importantly, fat, the reason for Vimes’ mission. The myth originates from the dwarfs, and mining those valuable minerals is the livelihood of many of them. 

However, how real is a myth? Or rather, does the real truth even matter, as long as people believe in some version of it? This is the crux of the story.

Tradition is the same skin changed over and over again

The Scone of Stone is the main mystery of the book. To anyone other than a dwarf, it is an ancient loaf of stale bread but to the dwarfs it is an incredibly important political object - the elected Low King of the dwarfs must sit on it to be considered legitimate.

However, the Scone goes missing. The reason for this is political, of course. Some of the more conservative dwarfs were not too happy about the election of one very progressive and contemporary Rhys Rhysson. Stealing the Scone would lose Rhys his legitimacy as Low King. It would also cause internal strife among the dwarfs, providing a convenient opportunity for other parties (such as the werewolves) to seize power.

The twist though, is that the real Scone was already a fake. Of course, not even the best preserved dwarf bread could survive 1,500 years. The dwarf kings’ in-circles have known this for generations and have maintained the facade for at least six different Scones now. 

What is important is that their people believe in the fake. And their belief makes it real. 

For instance, Dee (who was actually responsible for destroying the ‘real’ Scone) is visibly distressed when she tells a lie with her hands on the fake replica that Vimes brings back. The legends say that the Scone is baked with a single grain of truth, which causes it to glow red hot when someone lies with their hands on it. Up until then, Dee had been sure the Scone in front of her was fake (after all, she destroyed the real one). But her conviction is cast into doubt when both Low King candidates lie and tell her it is real.

It really should not have made sense - she should have clearly known the ‘real’ Scone was not there, but that one little inkling of doubt - ironically one grain of a lie mixed in with the actual truth - was enough to make it so real to her that she clearly started to feel a heat that should not exist coming from a replica Scone made in Ankh-Morpork of all places. In doing so, the lie becomes reversed - this replica is now just as real as the ‘real’ Scone. 

And does that not prove a ‘fake’ can be just as real as anything, even if it isn’t the original?

It also brings up a question: what makes the Scone legitimate? What makes it so much more than an ancient piece of stale bread? 

The answer is tradition and customs. The dwarfs assigned meaning to the Scone through its ritualistic use in the election of their Low King - it only has meaning if you care about dwarf society and politics i.e. its meaning is symbolic. This is why the Scone is still the Scone even when the original disappeared long ago.

We get this idea reinforced in the allegory of Rhys Rhysson’s family heirloom, a ‘nine-hundred-year old’ axe. Over the years its blade has been replaced, as has its handle. But it is still the family axe. What makes it the family axe is not the material that makes up the axe itself, but the attitudes and beliefs of the people connected to it. 

Identity is also a social construct

Just as the mythical Fifth Elephant is given meaning through the stories about its contributions to Uberwald's natural resources, and just as a piece of bread can be attributed significance through the beliefs of a particular group, people's identities are defined and collectively constructed through a series of stories: stories of how they look, how they behave, what customs they follow, what their ancestors did etc. These social constructs then arbitrarily determine someone’s worth relative to others, shaping relations all the way from the individual to the international level.

The thing is, just like the Fifth Elephant, none of these are ‘real’ in the sense they are tangible objects. Rather, they are a set of beliefs created, supported and carried on by people. And because these arbitrary boundaries are shaped by people, they can in turn be modified by people.

As an example, what makes a dwarf a dwarf? Why is Carrot accepted as one despite looking nothing like the average dwarf, while Cheery shunned for wearing a skirt? And why does the bar change depending on who you ask? Again, this comes down to customs. One could say there are customs that have always been practiced by dwarfs. Those customs therefore define dwarfs and to be a dwarf one must abide by those customs, as is tradition.

What this actually shows though, is that what defines a dwarf is how they are perceived by society. And this is why even if Cheery believes in her heart of hearts she is a dwarf, if dwarf society does not accept her, she can never truly be one.

But are customs and traditions not also constructed by people? And if people can change, traditions can too. The opinions of society are not absolute. They change constantly from person to person, even within the same time period, let alone across generations. I think the most on-the-nose example of this is Igor.

Igor are aesthetically and occupationally very similar - lumbering creatures stitched together from body parts as a parody of Frankenstein’s monster. They talk with a lisp and are almost always employed as servants. Did I mention all of them are named Igor? The only real way to tell them apart is from the difference in stitching if you look really close. And as we find out later in the book, the body parts that Igor are made of are actually of other Igor i.e. what makes Igor Igor is literally Igor.

But even among a species this similar, we see traditions starting to change with the new generation. Towards the end of the book, a young Igor exhibits signs of rebelling against Igor tradition - he does not want to be a servant, and ends up going to Ankh-Morpork to join the Watch instead. And though so far his way of thinking is the minority in Igor society, he actually has quite a bit of support to go off and do what he wants.

So definitions of identity, and narratives of what is acceptable and unacceptable, can and do change. Because these things are based on the will of people, and you can’t expect anyone to stay the same forever. 

Ok now it’s time to talk politics

Customs, traditions, culture and attitudes are shaped by the people who believe them. And a combination of those beliefs along with the actions of leaders is what drives politics.

Politics is tricky because one leader attempts to represent the will of a large group of very diverse people - which is basically an impossible task. But what you come to realise is that it doesn’t matter what your leaders think is truly real, it is more important to know what the people believe to be real. This is how a leader can instill beliefs and either make change happen, or maintain the status quo. It is how traditions like the Scone endure, or how dwarf-troll relations change.

When a leader is elected to represent their people, every action they make has a wider meaning on the scale of international politics. Vimes is not exaggerating when he talks about the power of two handshakes from the Low King - one to a troll and one to a female-identifying dwarf. A symbolic gesture from a person with power is a ripple that can become a tidal wave - a wave that can determine things like racism, prejudice, relations to other nations, and even what constitutes culture and tradition.

The actions of the new Low King, when displayed to the public, has the potential to turn the tides on traditional dwarf relationships, within Uberwald and far beyond. Because it is not about what a handshake is, but what the people believe it represents.

On a side note, I really also love this concept of a ripple for how it fits into Vimes’ worldview. Because it’s the small things that make up the bigger picture. Vimes feels like he hasn’t done much in the grand scheme of things - leave it up to the politicians and their symbolism to get things done. Vimes just focuses on the job in front of him. It’s simple, straightforward and why he prefers policing to politics.

But it was Vimes chasing down the mystery of the Scone as a policeman that enabled Rhys to eventually ascend to Low King and make these changes in the world. Small actions from one man in Ankh-Morpork snowballed into a major political change in Uberwald. It speaks to the connectedness of our world, of our relations to others. It makes me think of how every action from every person, no matter how small, has a place in the larger scheme of things.

Alone, none of us, not even the best leaders, can achieve real progress. Societies are built on the wills of the people in it. Things don’t happen unless we make them happen. Without dwarfs to continue telling the myth, the Fifth Elephant may as well never exist at all. After all, nobody witnessed it, right?

The Fifth Elephant is a brilliant title for this book because it is a motif for so many things that all thematically weave together in such a clever way. It tells us that the truth is never clear-cut, and that is why politics must be intentionally vague (a fact Vimes absolutely despises). It also tells us that the things we believe to be true may not actually be, and that the things we believe to be false may still have a grain of truth to them. Everyone’s truth is different because our truths are coloured by our experiences. And when you add in time and multiple storytellers with differing agendas into the mix, that truth becomes even muddier.

Therefore just as a scone can be much more than a stale piece of bread, just as wearing a dress can be interpreted in many ways beyond just self-expression, and just as the implications of a handshake can spread so much further beyond just the two shakers, know that the truth is never straightforward, and what you see on the surface is just one portion, one retelling, one misinterpretation, of a bigger picture you may never really get to fully understand.