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Not What You Meant?  There are 8 definitions for The Elephant Man.

The Elephant Man Study Guide

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by Bernard Pomerance
About 128 pages (38,526 words)
The Elephant Man (play) Summary

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Critical Essay #3

In this brief essay, Ricks discusses the recurrent imagery that Pomerance has borrowedfrom Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet, arguing that the playwright uses the material to illustrate the nature of social conformity in the world of The Elephant Man.

Repeated images the corset, the cathedral model, and the allusion to Romeo and Juliet represent twists on the idea of illusive and restrictive moral standards in Bernard Pomerance's The Elephant Man. The corset first stands as a symbol of mere control or restriction, depending on the degree of irony applied to the image. Ross, the freak show proprietor, uses the corset image to describe Merrick: he is the result of "Mother Nature uncorseted." Ross is trying to say that anything produced by an uncorseted (or uncontrolled) Mother Nature would certainly be freakish. But when one realizes that.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 526 words. This study guide contains 38,526 words (approx. 128 pages at 300 words per page).

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The Elephant Man from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.

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