My Review of The Elephant Man

The Elephant Man was a great story and was not like any other basic movie that one sees and forgets about immediately after. The movie stayed with me throughout the day even after leaving class and made myself question whether I am a good person or a bad person. By the time we finished the movie in class, I had become a more compassionate person, more wary of other's feelings. One theme, perhaps the most obvious theme, of questioning one's own morality impacted me most. I liked the initial simplicity of the movie: the biography of a man living with extreme deformities in the 1880's. Later, when we analyzed the complexity of the movie and connected it to humanity's rape on mother nature and figured out the hidden religious allusions I grew began to dislike the movie. Though it was genius to subtly incorporate such complex and deep meanings within the movie in extraordinary and creative ways I think I lost how I identified and connected with the movie. Either way, Lynch was very successful in incorporating multiple themes in one movie but I personally connected most with the most simplistic theme of questioning "Am I a good man, or am I a bad man?".

My name is John Merrick

Why am I different?


Although I suppose it does not matter why I am different because it does not change the fact that I am. I think its more curious why everyone else is so different. I do not understand why or how some can be kind and treat me like the human that I am, and even look passed my face and be so kind as to kiss my cheek, while others scream and cry and... when they see me. How would I act if I was normal and I met someone like me?

Welcome to my nightmare

I think my greatest fear is having to hide for my life. I was introduced to world war two and the horrors that the Nazi committed against the Jewish people at a very young age and I think that may have traumatized me a bit. My worst nightmare is connected to this fear. I had just seen the movie "War of the Worlds" maybe a week before I had this dream and I think it triggered my fear and caused the nightmare. It is kind of interesting that it was this movie in particular because I never really found the actual movie scary, but in my nightmare it was the scariest thing I ever had to experience. There is a scene in the movie where the protagonist family is hiding from the alien machines in a basemen and all is quiet. The machine sends a thing that looks like an eye but is the size of one of those big beach balls that people throw around in baseball games. It is this scene in particular that most resembles my nightmare. In my nightmare, I and four other kids who I did not know were all hiding together. I remember feeling like I could not breathe because I was afraid it would give us away. I was not afraid of dying after being found, but rather, I was afraid of being discovered. It was like being found by them meant something worse than death. An irrational fear I suppose, but a fear nonetheless.