The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance is about a very ugly man called John Merrick and he joined a show that his manager Ross let him to join. Ross uses the face of the Elephant Man to earn money and he made the audience be interested in it.When he joined the show, everybody looked at him like he was a disgusting object. But Treves doesn’t believe what he said because he learns science. John Merrick has an elephant head with little hair and a very fat body with huge fingers and a large body. The audience will be uncomfortable after looking at the Elephant Man and Ross uses the audience’s reaction to earn money and grab attention. He also first says a lot of bad things towards the Elephant Man’s appearance making the audience curious toward how the Elephant Man looks like. All those looking from the audience made the Elephant Man not feel well since anybody would not like people looking at their body. He felt that they were insulting him. This is the reason why the police came to capture Ross.
There is a kind of person in the world that can use anything just to earn what they want including using bad ways. Ross is this kind of person, he got the Elephant Man on the show just to earn money but outside, people just see that Ross is wanting to take care of the Elephant Man and make him feel better from all the looks from other people. But Ross is just using him as a tool for earning money. He uses the basic human nature of the audience and the curiosity of people to get more attention and attract more audience. Human nature is when you see something pretty or beautiful, you would feel happy and great, but when you see ugly things, you would feel bad. When the Elephant Man went on stage, of course he would feel bad because nobody likes to be watched by people in a funny, laughing way. These things show that Ross is a greedy and selfish person.
When there is a thing that makes them curious, people would like to discover what is this, and would not care about what way to discover it.This is the audience’s attitude in the story towards the appearance of the Elephant Man. When Ross used the human nature of them, they still didn’t realize that he is using the audience for earning money and getting attractions. They also hurted Elephant Man’s heart by laughing and murmuring about him. Everybody laughed and nobody said that it is bad to laugh and say for the Elephant Man and stop or help him to prevent people from saying bad things to him. Nobody did that. When a person is laughed at by lots of people, they will feel very desperate. This is the Elephant Man’s situation in the show. The audience just wanted to satisfy their curiosity and made the Elephant Man destroy the little trust in himself.
When everybody is curious about something, there could still be one person that is not curious and calmly says what is wrong. This is what Treves did in the story. He didn’t believe that a person that has an elephant head is true. When Ross said all those descriptions of the Elephant Man’s appearance, he said that this body is not possible to appear on a person. After Ross said that it has nothing to fear, he still didn’t believe it. He is a doctor, and has mercy on his patient. Treves think this is a very serious thing to happen. As a doctor, he thinks that what happened in the show is wrong because it is not fair for the Elephant Man. He showed the real problems of human nature like greediness and curiosity . He has the spirit of finding the truth of the Elephant Man.
In conclusion, in this story The Elephant Man, there are three main characters that represent different personalities in the true world. Ross is a greedy and selfish person, he would do anything just to earn money and grab attention. He uses the Elephant Man as a tool and the human nature curiosity of the audience in the Elephant Man’s appearance. He didn’t care about John Merrick’s feelings, he just wanted to have what he wanted. The audience also wants to satisfy their curiosity in their human nature and nobody helped the Elephant Man. Treves is a good person。 He has responsibility towards his patient, and thinks what happened in the show is very serious.
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