The Elephant Man

The Elephant Man is a play that was written by Bernard Pomerance. This was a play that was a true story about a real person named John Merrick. Merrick was a young man that has a horrific crippling disease that changed his entire life. From the beginning John is one of the acts of a traveling circus. This was where the title and john got his name of the elephant man half elephant and half man. The circus got their money from him exposing himself and his diseased body. In return for doing this he received a place to live, food, and was taken care of. John and the circus traveled to Belgium and the police say that he is indecent for anyone to see him. After John was taken by the police they find a card that was given to him by Doctor Treves, in which he works at the London hospital. Treves accepts him to the hospital and begins to study him. He wants to help john be as humanly normal as possible and eventually tells John he can call it “home.” While John is staying at the hospital many people come to see him and see what all the talk is about. Also while there in his free time he built a model of St. Phillips and shows actually how intelligent he is. Many people were interview to be Merrick assistant and the only one that passed was Mrs. Kendal. She visits and helps him very often and starts to find out that all john wants is to be normal and in his eyes to be normal is to see a beautiful woman naked. Eventually Mrs. Kendall reveals herself to him to help him feel more normal. When she does this Treves walks in and yells at her to leave. I believe Mrs. Kendal was the only one that saw John as a real person and felt that he was just like her. After Mrs. Kendal left, John felt left out and alone, because no one really talked to him anymore. Merrick lives the rest of his life at the hospital until he dies. My last thoughts about the story was that he was in a nice place staying in the hospital, but I start to become just like Ross and the director. Ross and the directors shows off Merrick for money and Treves shows off Merrick