Title: The Elephant Man, Author: Christine Sparks

"John Merrick had lived for more then twenty years imprisoned in a body that condemned him to a miserable life in the workhouse and to humiliation as a circus sideshow freak. But beneath that tragic exterior, within that enormous head, thrived the soul of a poet, the heart of a dreamer, the longings of a man. Merrick was doomed to suffer forever – until the kind Dr. Treaves gave him his first real home in the London Hospital and the town's most beautiful and esteemed actress made possible Merrick's cherished dream of human contact – and love."


The forcefulness of the very first line in the book is shocking to the reader, even for someone who is already familiar the infamous Elephant Man. "A wicked birth... monstrous... evil..." These words spark a number of new and unanswered questions that make us eager to keep reading. This story is based on the real life of John Merrick. The book sets the stage in the summer of 1889 in London, England.


The main character, Dr. Treaves, was a circus with his family and was eagerly searching for the Freak Tent. After finding it, and going in alone, Dr. Treaves encountered one man inside who raved,


"This is too much. They should not allow it – they should not allow it."


The first description we get of John Merrick, our Elephant Man, is of his feet “ - so knotted with veins and lumps, and so covered with scaly skin," and goes on to state that, "whatever was behind that curtain was genuinely monstrous."


Treaves noticed a depiction of the creature. "It was a crudely painted, life-sized portrait of a man turning into an elephant... the artist had somehow managed to depict the agony of a man undergoing a hideous transformation that he had no power to stop." While reading the depiction Treaves overheard an argument between an alderman and the Freak Show Proprietor.


"This exhibit degrades all who see it, as well as the poor creature himself," insisted the alderman.


"He's a freak!" the other bellowed. "How else is he to live?"


The alderman continued. "Freaks are one thing. No one objects to freaks, but this is entirely different."


He simply had to find out what was behind that curtain. Treaves left the tent vowing to find that freak. He was interested in the abnormalities of life. He was a doctor who operated on industrial wounds. The author paints a grizzly scene of efficiency and duty. The coldness of his methodical doctoring is reflected in the weather beyond the hospital walls. Knowing that he must find the object of his curiosity, Treaves left the hospital for an errand. We are led into a dirty, dingy shop, down a rickety staircase to a cramped. Damp cellar. In the back of the cellar is a curtain who's presence hid the treasure he coveted. Treaves saw the freak for the first time cowering beneath a dirty blanket, freezing in the dark.


"Treaves could hear a tune whistled by an errand boy, the companionable hum of the traffic in the road, and the footsteps of a world going about it's business unconscious of this dank, smelly cellar and the figure that waited in dreadful isolation." The Elephant Man was treated appallingly in horrid, unfit conditions, being commanded and gawked at. Even Treaves, a doctor of deformities of both disease and mutilation, gasped involuntarily and was shocked at what he saw.


The description of his first sight of the Elephant Man is challenging to read. Our minds have a difficult time creating the grotesque proportions of the image and it is not made easier by the intense examples of abnormal growths. Only one arm, the left, is described as being "... delicately shaped with fine skin. It was a hand that a woman might have envied."


"His head was enormous and misshapen, it's circumference as big as a mans waist. From the brow there projected a huge bony mass, almost obscuring the right eye, and the nose was a lump of flesh recognizable only by it's position.

From the upper jaw projected another mass of bone that protruded from the mouth like a stump, turning the upper lip inside out, making the mouth little but a slobbering aperture. It was this that had been exaggerated in the painting to make it appear to be a rudimentary trunk. The head was almost bald, except for a handful of lank, black hair on the top. At the back of the head hung a bag of spongy skin, resembling cauliflower.


His right arm was enormous and shapeless, the hand like a knot of tuberous roots. Indeed, it could barely be called a hand; it was more like a fin, or a paddle, with the back and the palm being exactly alike."


As a doctor, Treaves was intrigued by the Elephant Man and tried to learn more. Tiny pieces of the Elephant Man's past were scarcely revealed. Treaves bartered with the proprietor, Bytes, to hire the Elephant Man for study. His search for something of this magnitude had reached a satisfying end, and Treaves had his own agenda for the Elephant Man.


We are soon introduced to a new character. The head nurse, Mrs. Mothershead is presented to us as, "an inflexible woman in her early fifties with a hard powerful face." The question of her name, Mrs. Mothershead is aroused, as no one had ever met Mr. Mothershead. "Somehow authority sat more easily on a married woman, even if the title was only one of courtesy."


Mrs. Mothershead character presents us with the evolution of nursing with what is revealed of her background. We see her only in her working life, which was where she got her first impression of the Elephant Man. "She could not tell whether it was male, or female, as the left hand was the only part visible. This, and the fact that it was walking upright were all that identified it as human. The figure was enveloped in a black cloak so long that it swept the floor. On it's head was a very large black hat with a wide brim, and sewn round the edge of this brim was a grey flannel curtain that dropped down to the collar of the cloak. A small hole had been cut... about where the left eye should be."


Treaves collected him from her at the reception in the hospital and made the arduously slow journey, with his new companion, towards the privacy of his office. The Elephant Man was “stoically oblivious” to the stares from the others in the hospital, but Treaves was acutely and painfully aware of the context of those stares as, "jeering curiosity." The Elephant Man was, "... immovable in the silent agony of his own world."


Attempts to communicate with the Elephant Man left Treaves frustratingly no closer to finding out more about this wretched being. When Treaves examined the patient he was loathed to discover the utmost detail of his monstrous deformities in the light of the office. Both the reader and the doctor get a better understanding of the Elephant Man in more intimate conditions. Treaves begins to understand the malady's in a more scientific light and leaves the reader hints that there could be a logical explanation for his hideous appearance.

Treaves schemes to show off his prized subject at the meeting of the Pathological Society. He took glory and pride in his potentially lucrative discovery, and was eager to boast of his findings. He mentioned his past dealings with deformities of all kinds, but introduced the Elephant Man as, "... a degraded or perverted version of a human being." When it was over, Treaves struggled with the guilt of treating this creature as less than human. He prayed the patient was an imbecile; unaware of how life treated him.


Proof of cruelty and it's limits were written with callousness being heightened by the creature's apparent helplessness. Without full use of it's limbs, it had no defences and no ability to get away quickly. The Elephant Man was at the mercy of those around him. Treaves rescued him and for the first time realized the appalling conditions the Elephant Man was forced to live in, day after monotonously cruel day. Treaves's kindness must have been a tantalizing dream for someone in such hopeless conditions. Interestingly enough, Treaves actually saw the proprietor, or the owner of the Elephant Man, Bytes, as more disgusting and revolting simply because of his abhorrent character flaws.


Treaves moved his patient into the Isolation Ward of the hospital; a cleaner, warmer, more acceptable room. Treaves left the Elephant Man with promises of safety and although the Elephant Man made no motion of acknowledgement, it eased Treaves mind nonetheless. To establish a connection, Treaves realized that words weren't penetrating through to understanding. He moved to touch the squalid being. "[Treaves] could feel the instant flinch backwards... and for a moment [the patients] eyes were... human, pleading."


Treaves introduces the indomitable Mrs. Mothershead to the unfortunate patient and is surprised and relieved to see her unaffected by the Elephant Man's stench and appearance. She simply went about her duties with alarming efficiency. They bathed the monster, slowly scrubbing months, maybe years, of layered filth of his gruesome. This gave Treaves a chance to better examine the growths and deformities plaguing this man's body. Working together the doctor and head nurse begin to unravel his likely childhood.


"... he'd have to have had care. The very fact that he's alive bears that out. But where?" Treaves wonders.

"The workhouse," said Mrs. Mothershead.


The arrival of Treaves's kindness lurked the arrival of a more unsavoury character. We get to know Jim Renshaw through a series of self-confessions. He proclaimed himself to be a man who enjoyed a "little bit of fun." He was an immoral troublemaker accustomed to always getting what he wanted. Through fear, he ruled those around him. Unfortunately, he worked the night shift at the hospital and paid a visit to the newest, isolated patient. Being a bully, that visit was hardly social.


Treaves had misgivings about leaving his patient alone at the hospital during the night. He knew something of this nature needed constant protection. However, he was helpless to oblige due to two single facts. The Elephant Man was not initially welcome. Treaves's boss, the Chairman of the hospital, had already made that perfectly clear, and aside from that, there was no one to watch him.


When Treaves arrived at the hospital the next morning, he could tell from his patients behaviour that something has terrified him. He noticed details amiss when he entered the room; evidence from Renshaw's visit the night before, but he suspected nothing. Instead, he was frustrated by his patients lack of comprehension and sought to teach it to speak. His efforts were a success, and it gave him hope that he could convince the hospital to let him stay. Being able to talk showed that the patient was truly human, and deserving of medical attention.


Treaves wrestled with the persistent question, was the patient intelligent, or not? This proved a dilemma as both answers required different courses of action. While Treaves struggled to find a way to be sure, Renshaw was back at the hospital paying another late night visit to the poor, wretched soul, scaring him frightfully.


That same afternoon would be Treaves's only chance to convince the Chairman to concede to let the patient stay. After a successful session, Treaves was sure that the Chairman would be pleased. Treaves couldn't fight back a moment of guilt in using the Elephant Man for his personal gain. “On the very day he was to try and convince [the Chairman] of Merrick's humanity he had fallen into the vulgar error of thinking of him as 'a specimen.'” He was faced with a cold-hard question of motives. Was he only trying “... to fool the world that his specimen was a human being, so that he could go on having the use of him as a specimen?”


He had tried to teach his patient some polite conversation and a verse from the Bible in hopes that his God-fearing boss would find favour in it's recital. He was pleased with Merrick’s attempts and hoped they will be enough. Both men got a lesson in humility when Merrick proved not only capable of conversation, but also revealed that he had learned to read many years ago by a sick Vicar he had known in a hospital from his youth, who also taught him the glory of God's love.


“And do you believe that?” questioned the Chairman.

“Oh, yes. Else how would Mr. Treaves have found me?”


The sensitive human nature of Merrick's was fully apparent now. We get a sweet glimpse into his inner thoughts and how all the sounds, especially the voices, of the hospital teased him. Especially the nurses. He had little to no experience with women and we see his desire to get to know them better. He watched them, enthralled, from his window as the shifts changed. “To his enchanted eyes every girl was pretty. Every normal, properly proportioned face gleamed with youth and health; every smile, however tired, was radiant. Now and then laughter floated up to him like music from another planet.” “He felt as close to happiness as he ever had in his life.”


As we are pulled deeper into his most private thoughts, we are lead, for the first time, to thoughts of his mother. His memories are supported by his only belonging; a worn picture of her. “It was a photograph, battered and creased, but still discernible as the picture of a young woman of extraordinary beauty.” These thoughts of his mother naturally lead through to his childhood and into the present where all his life he had been plagued by those who wanted to exploit and abuse him. That day was no different when he was confronted by Renshaw who took delight in scaring and bullying the abused young man. Yet “[the Elephant Man] must just keep quiet and bear it, as he had kept quiet and borne so much of his life.”


“Any attempts to [find out more about his life] reduced him to the deepest distress, turning him again into a babbling, confused creature, incapable of any communication save a moan of misery.” Very slowly Merrick began to peel back the layers of his life for the benefit of Treaves. We are thrown unceremoniously into the Elephant Man's world; it was an “... unending hell of deformity and life as a public spectacle.” As readers, we are pitched into the truth of his world and through “sympathetic imagination” we, for a moment, live the life he lived. With, “... grief of abandonment, the freezing sense of being alone in this world.” Abused and neglected he ended up in the paupers hospital at age 7 where he met the Vicar and was taught to read and write. But that solace soon ended and he found himself a freak in a circus; treated no better than the animals.


After hearing his tragic story, Treaves takes a private moment to “...spew out the savage shame he felt for his own species.” In his rant, he discovered something utterly astonishing. In spite of a revolting upbringing, Merrick “remained sensitive, intelligent – and lovable. His nature is gentle and affectionate. He's without cynicism or resentment, and in all he's told [Treaves] I've never heard him utter an unkind word about anyone.”


Treaves continued to wrestle with the guilt. “As his pity and understanding grew, so did his pain and he wondered how he could ever have regarded Merrick as merely a specimen.” Treaves had never been so acutely aware of the fact that even he, a man of society, a learned doctor and gentleman, made assumptions and judged by appearance. “... as much cruelty was committed by single-minded men wearing blinders as by men of conscious evil.”


Merrick was awarded two small, cozy rooms on the ground floor of the hospital. It was the first time he'd lived somewhere other than a workhouse, a carnival trailer or as a patient in a hospital. That step into a nicer society urged his desire to visit a real house. Treaves decided to let him meet his wife as a guest for tea in their home. At first, she didn't like the idea and was sure she'd hate Merrick. When she met him for the first time, she realized that “he is afraid of me. He is afraid he will see horror and revulsion in my face, so he protects himself by looking away first.” This revelation made her see him as a lonely child. She pitied him and showed him pictures of her family. He then volunteered the picture of his mother and she got a rare glimpse into his most inner longings to belong.

“She was an angel. She would hold my head and sing to me. She was so kind... You must not think ill of her. It's not her fault... I'm sure I must have been a great disappointment to her.”


Mrs. Treaves responded, “No son as loving as you are could ever be a disappointment.”


“If only I could find her. If only she could see me now, here, with such lovely friends... Then maybe she would love me as I am. I've tried so hard to be good.”


Soon we get another glimpse into the longings of his heart. “It was easy in this room without mirrors to forget what he was, and think that a pretty girl might talk to him at her ease, might smile and laugh, and that he might see reflected in her friendly eyes the image of the man he longed to be.” We can feel the full force of his wanting to fit in.


The Chairman offered to write a letter to the Times magazine in an appeal for charity to help fund, or find, Merrick a permanent home. This magazine publication fell into the hands of some of the richest and most notable people in London Society, including Madge Kendal, celebrated actress, member of high society and reader of Times magazine. She vowed to meet him, and did. Treaves tried to soften the blow that was meeting Merrick for the first time, by showing visitors a picture of him.


“... no photograph... could prepare anyone for the piteous outrage of nature that was John Merrick.” “Physically Merrick had surpassed [Madge Kendal's] worst nightmares. But now, as she forced herself to talk to him, she found herself confronted by a wistful, gentle personality, who's words, though a little indistinct, were courteous and even charming. It disturbed her to discover that mingled with her pity was a liking for the person he was.”


She recognized his fate as a man with nothing. Over quoted lines from Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' she was resolved to give him something every man needed. “She put all the gentleness and tenderness of her woman's soul in the effort to lay her lips against the corner of his distorted mouth.” At the hands of a beautiful woman, John Merrick experienced his first, and last kiss.


Their visit made the headlines and her endorsement won him a spot on the Ladies Gazette. “... Mr. Merrick has never been properly presented to London Society. But knowing that wherever Mrs. Kendal goes, others inevitably follow. The question arises – will London Society present itself to him?” “They [came] to chat to him as though he was just anyone and gradually I think that's how he's beginning to think of himself.”


Mrs. Mothershead, believed these visits no better than the ogling crowds who used to stare at him in the circus freak shows. Treaves argued back.


“Was it not better to allow him to continue in this happy ignorance, even at the cost of a small deception?”


Through it all, Treaves watches Merrick’s new life unfold, revealing the nicest human qualities apparent in his personality. Merrick's innocent and beautiful soul caused Treaves to look at his own. What he saw there made him feel ugly. He asked if Merrick needed anything else.


“Oh no, there is nothing. I have everything. You have given me everything I could possibly want. I am happy every hour of the day.”


No sooner does Merrick have his very own home for the first time ever, than who should show up? His old owner, Bytes, lead by the bully, Renshaw. There was a crowd this time, and in a drunken frenzy they all helped push and pull Merrick through the open window. After shoving him around and feeding him alcohol, Merrick soon became disoriented. He desperately searched for help. “They were silent now, circling him like a pack of dogs closing in on a terrified rabbit. He swept his eyes round the circle... seeking some spark of human mercy in any of them. But they were animals.”


Eventually, the crowd dispersed, and the immediate horror seemed to have ended. Until Bytes slunk out of the darkness to reclaimed his property back into an old, familiar nightmare. Almost without resistance, due to years of subservient behaviour, Merrick was led away.

When Treaves found out that Merrick is gone, he was livid! He knew it was Bytes, but had no way to track him down. The Chairman urgently tried to remind him of his duty to the hospital.


“The man has disappeared. Very likely to the continent. There's no question of you're going after him; you're desperately needed here by your patients. Remember Treaves, you did everything in your power.”


Merrick was moved on to Brussels in Belgium where he and Bytes joined in with a circus that had a permanent Freak Show. “[The freaks] backed away a little when they first saw him, so that Merrick discovered that he was a freak even among freaks. The knowledge would've hurt him if he had not been beyond hurt by now. But they recovered themselves quickly. Their eyes were not blinded by what was 'normal.' To them, the abnormal was normal, and withing a short time they had accepted Merrick into the fellowship of the deformed. For the first time in his life he was one among equals. It was something even Treaves had not been able to give him.”


“Many of the freaks were there own managers. They paid the circus a percentage of their earnings but otherwise they were free. Those who were managed by others had struck bargains out of which they did very well. There was not one who, like Merrick, was treated as a possession.”


“[Merrick wondered if it would have been better never to have known [his old] life than to have known it and lost it, but he could not bring himself to believe that, not even now, better anything than not to have known Treaves, the friend he loved with his whole heart, and whom he would never see again.”


Even in his darkest hours he did not regret losing that glorious glimpse of the life other, normal men, lived. Nor did he utter one unkind word about any of those who had done him wrong. Even then, he had the utmost character and gracious poise of a man, even though Bytes treated him like an animal.


Merrick's disease had not stopped attacking his body and he grew sicker and weaker every day. It came to a point where he could not even feed himself the meagre potatoes and water Bytes offered for nourishment. Soon he could not preform. Bytes didn't appreciate being stuck with a useless animal and after getting drunk one evening, locked Merrick in the monkey cage before going to pass out for the night.


Eventually his friends and community of freaks approach the cage. Together they helped him escape; both from the prison, and from Bytes entirely. That night under the cover of darkness, the odd, little party escorted Merrick away. They led him to a train station and pointed him in the direction of England. “No fear could be greater than his determination to get back to London.”


As was his life, the journey home was potentially dangerous for Merrick alone. He had made it to London with luck. Unfortunately, that luck ran out in the form of curious young boys. “... the boys followed him, taunting him all the way.” One of them managed to pull off his hood. This caused a great commotion attracting the attention of the police and a crowd of horrified onlookers.


“Cornered at last Merrick faced them, his head nakedly exposed. He was breathing heavily with strain and nervous exhaustion, but something was growing inside, coming from a place deep down, so deep that he had never explored it, nor known of it's existence.

It was a feeling of anger that grew out of self-confidence and knowledge of himself that Treaves had studied so hard to give him. It was a realization that now if ever he must assert himself in the face of the world, or pass away without ever having really existed.


It seemed to give him strength, shaking his body uncontrollably as if it were a volcano about to erupt, and suddenly a cry burst from his lips, powerful and assured, such as he had never uttered before.


'No!' he screamed. 'I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I – am – a – man. I AM A MAN!'”


Not long later, the police contacted Treaves who came, once again, to rescue him; to bring his friend home. Back in the safety of his rooms at the hospital Treaves tried to apologize to John.


“You must not blame yourself, my friend. How could you be expected to know? You have so much to think about here, so much responsibility, so many lives in your hands...”


As he spoke those words, Treaves recognized that John had “... rescued the human being who was in danger of being submerged in the doctor.” Treaves knew that even though he saved John's life, John also saved his. Just by being himself in everything Nature intended him to be, he touched the hearts of those who knew him best; including her Royal Highness the Princess Alexandra. His influence was enough to cause Treaves to wonder “if it was better to be [a rich young man] smiled on by fortune till his senses dulled and he cared for nothing, or a creature like [John] who felt every joy, every tiny pleasure, a thousand times over? At that moment, he could not have said.”


John sat back and reflected on his life particularly escaping from Bytes. “He had done all this, just as any other man would. He was a traveler, a man with the experience of journeying on land and sea.” With the goodness of a friend called Treaves, John Merrick had at last found himself. He now knew who he was.


He was a man. 











 The Elephant Man, Author Christine Sparks.