motional. This is something everyone can relate to, and no one is proud of. The play is literary because it tells the beautiful story of a mans life and how he suffered then thrived then suffered again. Pomerance did an excellent job of using both Merrick and Dr. Treves metophoricly. Merrick represents people and his deformities represent our uniqueness. People in the play run from Merrick's deformities the way people in society run away from people who are not like the rest of the crowd. Dr. Treves represents rules and conformity. The rules are meant to help us, and they do, but in the end conformity strips of our individuality and destroys our uniqueness. Pomerance uses religion to express this metaphor in one example. Merrick wants strongly to believe in God,(individuality) but Dr. Treves begins to doubt his religious beliefs and discourages Merrick because he see's no scientific proof of a God (conformity). The theme of The Elephant Man is the arbitrariness of existence posed against a hunger for design. Everyone in life tries to fit in and be like everyone else, especially Merrick. It starts in grade school and continues through out life. As children we want the same toys our friends have or the ones we see on TV. As we get older it becomes imperative that we have name brand clothing and shoes. We style our hair the way others do and even try to make our bodies look the way society says they should. When we reach adult hood the problem doesn't go away. We buy named brand food, appliances, and even cars. This continues until we die when our family covers our graves with expensive flowers. No matter how much people strive to be like others, inside everyone there is a hunger to be them self. People have opinions and certain uniqueness that they can not help but to feel. The Elephant Man was treated so horribly that all he ever wanted was to be treated normal and liked. He spent his entire stay at the hospital put...
