A Study Guide for Bernard Pomerance's "The Elephant Man," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

“An enthralling and luminous play” about the nineteenth-century man whose physical deformity doomed him to the life of an outcast: “haunting [and] splendid” (The New York Times). The Elephant Man is based on the life of John Merrick, who lived in London during the latter part of the nineteenth century. A horribly deformed young man, a freak attraction in traveling side shows, is found abandoned and helpless and is admitted for observation to Whitechapel, a prestigious London hospital. Under the care of a famous young doctor who educates him and introduces him to London society, Merrick changes from a sensational object of pity to the urbane and witty favorite of the aristocracy and literati. But his belief that he can become a man like any other is a dream never to be realized. After premiering in London, The Elephant Man went on to Broadway where it won the Tony for Best Play in 1979. It was later revived in a Broadway production starring Bradley Cooper. “TheElephant Man is a moving drama. Lofted on poetic wings, it nests on the human heart.” —Time Magazine

A Study Guide for Bernard Pomerance's "The Elephant Man," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

The surgeon Frederick Treves and the anthropologist Ashley Montagu helped make him famous. Filmmaker David Lynch and playwright Bernard Pomerance made him a star. According to the popular press, singer Michael Jackson wanted to buy his bones from London Hospital. Stories about Joseph Merrick--the "Elephant Man" of Victorian England--combine elements of myth and fable, tragedy and melodrama, freak show and farce. And they seem to have perennial appeal. In Articulating the Elephant Man, Peter W. Graham and Fritz H. Oehlschlaeger examine how the phenomenon called "the Elephant Man" has been constructed and reconstructed--how Joseph Merrick has been transformed from a suffering individual into an exhibit, a shape-shifting curiosity whose different guises variously suit the needs of particular audiences, genres, and interpreters. Merrick's "presenters" have been a varied group of artists, medical experts, scholars, and biographers. But preceding them all is Merrick himself, no mere passive sufferer but an individual who bravely endured--and, when he had to, successfully exploited--his outrageous bodily disorder. According to Graham and Oehlschlaeger, each account--starting with Merrick's autobiographical pamphlet--blends description and creation, observation and self-revelation, and the selective recording, alteration, and suppression of details. Telling the story of the Elephant Man, whether as a drama, a film, a sequence of poems, or a medical case study, often reveals as much about the observer as it does about the subject. The Victorians' accounts of Merrick, for example, reflect that era's tendency to normalize the extraordinary, to colonize the exotic. For them, Merrick was both anideal object of charity and a challenge to their most basic assumptions about humanity. In our own time, Merrick is cast as the ultimate outsider. If it was culturally convenient for the Victorians to patronize Merrick and congratulate his "benefactors", contemporary cultural biases make it easier for us to admire him as a subversive hero and to debunk his "exploiters". Like the hero of a folk tale, the real Merrick suffered indignities but enjoyed a dramatic change of fortune. At the end of his life, he had attained a measure of comfort, a small portion of fame, and the courteous notice of the eminent, the beautiful, even the royal. At the heart of his story, the authors suggest, is Merrick's humanity--and telling his story helps us define our own. Merrick faced what every human being who grows old or falls ill must endure, the sufferer's painful questions about cause and effect, about personal guilt or cosmic cruelty. He knew the isolation felt by every outsider--the poor, the homeless, the victimized, even the modern "superstar". And, like each of us, he must have wondered if appearance is, after all, a misleading mask.

“Excellent” poetry and prose about physicians and their patients, by Raymond Carver, Kay Redfield Jamison, Rachel Naomi Remen, and more (Library Journal). A Life in Medicine collects stories, poems, and essays by and for those in the healing profession, who are struggling to keep up with the science while staying true to the humanitarian goals at the heart of their work. Organized around the central themes of altruism, knowledge, skill, and duty, the book includes contributions from well-known authors, doctors, nurses, practitioners, and patients. Provocative and moving pieces address what it means to care for a life in a century of unprecedented scientific advances, examining issues of hope and healing from both ends of the stethoscope. “An anthology of lasting appeal to those interested in medicine, well-written literature, and a sympathetic understanding of human life.” —Booklist