My View of The Elephant Man

Reading plays tends to be difficult for me, but when I was reading this play one major idea seemed to confuse me. There is one part at the very end of scene VII where Treves, Bishop and Gomm are speaking and they want to make Merrick just like them. The tone of the bishop sounds like it is almost in wonder and smiles as if he thinks the others are joking. As though he is thinking, "really? like us? why would you want more of us?" but then later in scene XII they are all talking about the ways in which Merrick is like them and those are things that he seems to have been like even before he went into the hospital. They all take what they believe are positive attributes and say that these are the ways he is like them. What I did not really like is that everybody seems to agree that he is just like them but without the experience of the outside world and yet they do not allow him out of the hospital to experience that outside way of life. It seems as though that would be the best and that he would have to learn to deal with the people staring or asking questions eventually and that he may be able to get closer to normality that way. The whole point of him agreeing to go into the hospital was so that he may have a chance at a normal life and they said they could help him get it but he seems farther away from it after going in the hospital then he was in the freak show. It seems as though when he was working and living in the circus that he was just acting the part like the Mrs. Kendal was doing for her job. It just so happens that it was a very rare person could do his job whereas many people can learn to do her job. I do agree that depending on which people are around him changes how Merrick acts, but we as "normal" people do that all the time, we do not speak to our parents or our children the same way as we do our teachers or for that case other students. Many people hide who they are from everybody for all their lives and are able to live like that. I think it is wrong for them to judge Merrick by a different standard that the one that they follow for themselves. It seems that these people are not very good role models and should not be trying to teach another person how it is appropriate to act when they are hypocrites. Merrick seems to be abnormal to these people only because they do not understand why he does not want to be honest about who he is in front of them, when it is he that can see right through them and can realize that they are fakers and he should just go with them and they can give him what he has wanted for a long time, a “normal” life.