Themes Joseph Merrick and Elephant Man Essay - 940 Words

Breaking through the Blindness: A Fight for Freedom The three short stories we read, The Elephant in the Village of Blind, 20/20, and The Cathedral, all have many common themes with the movie The Elephant man. What intrigues me the most is the hidden underlining meaning each and every story carries. There are three prominent themes I would like to discuss, the figurative and the literal blindness of the characters in the works, enlightenment, and the freedom the characters experience throughout each individual piece. The themes also go hand in hand because one cannot learn a lesson without achieving enlightenment, and cannot free themselves if there is no blinding barrier. The one prominent similarity in all the works is the blindness†¦show more content†¦Even though sometimes people are deceived by other aspects and judge hashly by first impression, eventually they will surely change their perspective to understand things more clearly. There are times when ones vision is blinded due to the lack of experience, but once they cross that barrier they surely reach enlightenment. The four young mothers sitting on the bench, in the story The Elephant in the Village of the Blind, came to a realization that the elephant in fact is not a scary creature but an enormous, gentle ox with a stretched nose. If the villagers would have never given the elephant a chance, they would have been blinded from the idea of a dangerous elephant and probably would not have been delightfully enlightened to find out how gentle the elephant is. Bill, in 20/20, gets enlightened towards the end of the story. Even though at first he found Ruthies imagination and her vision naive, he decided to drive and try t see the world from Ruthies perspective. At the end of the story The Cathedral, Robert says Its really something to the experience he received by drawing the cathedral blindfolded. He judged the blind man from the beginning and did not like the fact that the man was in his hou se, but eventually he realizes how much he was missing out on and was enlightened by the experience of drawing blindfolded. We also see the same occurrence in the movie The Elephant man, the whole townShow MoreRelatedThe Life Of Gregor Samsa1383 Words   |  6 PagesLauren Johnson Ariel McCarter English 2B 3 April 2017 The Life of Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis vs. Joseph Merrick, â€Å"Elephant Man† One person who lived a life that greatly resembled Gregor is Joseph Merrick, the â€Å"Elephant Man.† Merrick was afflicted with a genetic disease, possibly Proteus syndrome (James 554), that deformed him to the point that his skin resembled an elephant. There were bony growths on his face and body. From difficulty moving around to challenges with communications, there