First one elder reached out and felt its flapping ear. "An elephant is soft but rough and flexible, like a leather fan." Another grasped its back leg. "An elephant is a rough, hairy pillar." An old woman took hold of a tusk and gasped, "An elephant is a cool, smooth staff." A young girls seized the tail and declared, "An elephant is a fringed rope." A boy took hold of the trunk and announced, "An elephant is a water pipe." Soon others were stroking its sides which were furrowed like a dry plowed field, and others determined that its head was an overturned washing tub attached to the water pipe.
Initially upon reading this, my first thought was that everyone had formed their own opinion to the animal. Everyone was looking at this new object and trying to relate it to their own experience. I think we as humans tend to take things that we don't really understand and relate them to our own experiences in hopes of understanding it. When something we don't get enters our lives, we are going to make sense of it in our own way even if it ends in arguing, which it always usually does. I wonder whether or not the writer is referring to money at the end when mentioning wages? I'm not quite sure.