The Elephant Man

April 11, 2016 avn5224 3 Comments

Today, I will be analyzing the play, The Elephant Man, by Bernard Pomerance. The play tells the story of John Merrick, who was born with a congenital disorder that allows him to earn his living as the “elephant man” in a freak show. Dr. Treves wants to study Merrick’s disorder and invites him to live at the London Hospital. Initially seen as only a freak, Merrick’s humanity becomes more and more apparent as he meets more people. Eventually Merrick’s condition causes his death and the readers see his impact on the world he touched.

Bernard Pomerance

Bernard Pomerance was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1940. He studied at the University of Chicago and moved to London in 1968. His first play, High in Vietnam, Hot Damn was performed first in 1972. The Elephant Man was produced originally in 1977. It won the Tony Award for Best Play. The play was produced into a film in 1980.

The Elephant Man was based on the life of a real man, Joseph Merrick, who was born on August 5, 1862 in England. It is now known that he suffered from Neurofibromatosis type I and Proteus syndrome. He was born with no outward symptoms of any disorder for the first few years of his life. At age 5 he began to start showing symptoms with thick, lumpy skin, similar to an elephant. He then began developing swellings and lumps all over his skin. His family explained his symptoms as a result of his mother being knocked over by a circus elephant while pregnant with Merrick. This is where the name elephant man originates. He tried several jobs, but his condition left him too deformed and disabled, so he chose to be in a freak show, which were very popular in England at the time.

The Elephant Man tells the story of John Merrick, the elephant man. Treves, a surgeon, stumbles upon a freak-show and becomes intrigued with Merrick’s condition. Merrick’s manager, Ross, agrees to allow Treves to study Merrick. Merrick goes from one freak show to another of sorts, when Treves makes Merrick stand on display while he describes Merrick’s condition to the audience. Pomerance highlights the acceptable and not-acceptable dehumanization of Merrick.

As the play continues, Merrick meets more and more people. While most are initially horrified at his external appearance, everyone he meets becomes intrigued and taken by him. Merrick externally appears more animalistic than human compared to his visitors, but it seems that Merrick is more human than them. Merrick changes the lives of everyone he meets. Here, Pomerance explores what defines humanity.

Eventually, Dr. Treves admits that Merrick is dying and nothing he can do can save him. Merrick goes to sleep sitting up, a posture that he must use to keep the weight of his head from suffocating him. In a dream-like state, Merrick is laid down to sleep normally and he dies. In the end, the elephant man died like a ‘normal’ man. His human masculinity triumphed in the end.

The final scene of the play depicts Treves writing Merrick’s obituary. He initially includes the aspects of Merrick’s humanity he only learned after getting to known him. He changes it last minute saying that it’s too late, describing Merrick only as the elephant man instead of the human man. In the end Merrick was known for his animalism instead of his humanity.

Bradley Cooper and my English teacher, following the Broadway production.

I was lucky enough to read this play and then see the movie and the play. This allowed me to see the translation from words to the screen or stage. It was particularly interesting to see the differences in interpretation, from me, to the director of the movie, to the director of the play because we all read the same play.

Bradley Cooper, who played Merrick on Broadway last year, came to my English class to lead class on the discussion of the play. He graduated from my high school and still remains close with my English teacher so my English teacher surprised us one day. I was able to get the perspective of someone, who has studied this play for many years and also see the behind the scenes work of the translation from play to stage. We primarily discussed the transition of Merrick from being viewed as a freak and being viewed as a human. Merrick is viewed as a freak when the only picture you get is the image of a disfigured, thing, that barely even looks human. Merrick doesn’t talk more than a grunt well into the play, but once he does speak, he is human and more than that he is an intelligent human being. Once the characters and the reader get to known Merrick past his disfigurement, he becomes human in our eyes. But he always was, we just hadn’t taken the time to realize.

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The Children of Men

April 5, 2016 avn5224 2 Comments

“I thought, if there was no future, how would we behave?” P.D. James

This week I will be discussing the novel The Children of Men by P.D. James. The novel tells the story of a dystopian world where no children have been born for twenty-five years. James questions what would happen in a world with no future for humanity. This book has interesting real world relevance today and gives and insight to the true nature of humanity. I would recommend it.

P.D. James was born in Oxford, England on August 3, 1920. Her father was a tax inspector. She went to Cambridge High School for Girls until age 16, when she had to drop out to support her family and because her family didn’t believe in higher education for girls. She was married in 1941 and had two daughters. Her husband returned from World War II and suffered mental illness because of it. Because her husband was in a psychiatric institution, James studied hospital administration and worked for a hospital board in London. She began writing in the mid-1950s and her first novel, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962. James is known for her detective mystery novels. She diverted from this theme with The Children of Men, published in 1992. That book was adapted for film in 2006, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, although it differed greatly from the novel. James died on November 27, 2014 at the age of 94.

In 2021, the world is slowly ending. The men have become infertile and no babies have been born since 1995. The world has become bleak, where providing for posterity has ceased to give life its point and the goal instead is short-term comfort and entertainment. England is ruled by a dictatorial Warden and supervised by the State Security Police. The last-born children are called Omegas, beautiful and talented but cruel and powerful. James brings up the notion that if you treat children from infancy as gods, they will act as devils in adulthood.

The novel focuses on Theo Faron, a 50-year-old Oxford history professor. He no longer has any children of his own, he ran over his daughter in a tragic accident years ago and his wife never forgave him. He is cousin to Xan, the Warden of England and used to be a close adviser to the Warden until he left because he couldn’t handle the abuse of power.

Here, James explores how certain kinds of tyrants come to exist. The social disorder and pessimism have allowed Xan to seize control. The shame of the Parliament gives illusion of democracy and the members of the ruling Council never disagree with Xan. This type of ruling is presented to the public and accepted as strong and desirable response to threats to the country. The countries of the world are more defensive than ever to keep their country running smoothly for as long as possible, even if that involves causing the ruin of other countries. This spikes anti-immigration sentiment, which is eerily similar to today. The Warden focuses on England at the expense of everyone else. The government justifies abuse in the name of a smoothly run society. It supports and encourages forced labor of immigrants and encourages the mass suicides of the old. When Theo questions Xan’s tyranny, Xan responds that at first he did it because he thought he’d enjoy it and eventually no one else was competent to take over. After Theo calls Xan out for his cruel rule, he responds, “Have you ever known anyone to give up power?” Here James raises an interesting notion on the idea of power, especially in government. Xan justifies his complete power on the basis that no one really cares anymore. No one votes because it doesn’t matter. Absolute power is the only answer here because democracy can’t function if its people don’t pay attention and care. James also questions how tyrants come to be. They do not come to exist overnight. By the time people realize that the dictatorship is a problem, Xan has too much power to be stopped.

Theo wanders through life without purpose until he is approached one day by a young woman, who asks him to meet with her group called the Five Fishes. The group aims to erase human rights abuses and restore democratic government. Intrigued by this young woman Theo reluctantly agrees to help. Theo falls in love with Julian, marking his first real human feeling in years. The readers later learn that the woman, Julian, is pregnant. Julian wants to keep her baby away from the government, who she believes will only use the child for their own power, but the government has a clear interest in the first baby in 25 years. This begins the action of the novel with the Five Fishes plus Theo on the run from Xan. With clear allusion to the Bible and the Virgin Mary, Julian’s baby represents redemption and a real future.
James distills the problems in life down to the simple. Value the small miracles of life.

This book was also turned into a film in 2006.

I highly recommend this book especially with its clear parallels to today’s society.

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Room

March 28, 2016 avn5224 2 Comments

This week I am reviewing the novel Room by Emma Donoghue. The book tells the story of a young boy and his mother imprisoned in a single room. Absolutely heartbreaking and gut-wrenching, this book stays with you long after you put it down.
Emma Donoghue was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1969. She is the youngest of eight children and her father was an academic and literary critic. She graduated from University College Dublin with a Bachelor of Arts degree and earned a PhD in English from Girton College, Cambridge.
Her first novel, Stir Fry, was published in 1994. Room was published in August 2010. New York Times named it one of their six best fiction books in 2010. It was awarded the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Irish Book Award. Emma Donoghue wrote the screenplay for the book’s transformation into a film. Here’s the link for the film trailer. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her work. She now lives in London, Ontario with her life partner, Christine Roulston and their two children.

Jack was born and raised in a twelve-by-twelve room with his mother, Ma. He has never known any different, the room is his home, his whole world. There is a bed, a rug, a wardrobe, a TV, and a plant. In one corner there is a microwave, refrigerator, oven, and a table. This is his sole landscape of his childhood. Because he never knew any different, Jack is a happy kid, who accepts his life as it is. They exercise by walking in circles around the room or jumping on the bed. They sing, read, and play games. Jack’s mom was kidnapped from a parking lot when she was nineteen. Her kidnapper, whom Jack and her refer to as Old Nick, locked her in a shed in his backyard. She eventually became pregnant with Jack and raised him in the shed. When he was born, she made the decision not to explain the situation to him. He believes the whole world is in the room and that the world he sees on TV, is the same as outer space.

Writing in Jack’s voice is the decision that defines the novel. Jack describes only what he sees and hears, like a child would. His childhood innocence in the face of absolute depravity emphasizes the despair of the situation. Donoghue brilliantly captures the language or a child, the observations, the weird little obsession, and tantrums. When Old Nick comes each night, Jack hides himself in the wardrobe and counts the creaks of the bed, “till he makes that gaspy sound and stops.” Donoghue allows the readers to make the leap between Jack’s innocent observations and the harshness of reality in the room. Kidnap, confinement, and rape are told from the point of view of a five-year old, who’s having a great time. This limited perspective sets up a contradiction, for Ma Room is a place of terror, but for Jack, it’s the only home he knows.

Right after Jack’s 5^th birthday, Old Nick loses his job. Ma, worried that he will abandon them to starve in Room, plans an escape. Before this can happen she must tell Jack the truth about the world outside. This completely uproots Jack’s life by tossing out all that he previously thought of as fact. In the span of a few days, Ma tries to teach Jack everything about the outside world, serving as a sped-up representation of growing up. In a surprisingly problem-free escape, Jack and Ma leave Room for the first time and enter or re-enter the real world. Instead of ending the book after the great escape, Donoghue displays the true horror of the experience, by questioning ‘what happens next?’ directly.

After their escape, Ma and Jack begin their assimilation into the real world. Their escape and captivity is headline news, their upcoming court case elicits media frenzy; they have become celebrities of sorts. Here, Ma and Jack have their first separation, sleeping in different rooms, not spending every second of every day together. This comes as a betrayal to Jack. The mother-child bond is exaggerated here, and Jack does not want to leave the nursery. This serves as an exaggerated representation of motherhood, when the mother and the child have to leave the bubble they created for themselves and enter the real world. For Jack, Room represented safety, while Outside is where life is truly terrifying, where people are strangers, where he can’t be with Ma 24/7, and where bees actually sting.

In the post-escape part of the novel, Donoghue introduces a satirical element. All Jack knows is Room; he’s an alien taking his first steps onto the real planet. Jack makes comments on the way the world works from the point of view of someone, who has never experienced it. He never wanted to go outside and make friends and play on a playground, and now he’s being practically forced, to be grateful for the freedom he was molded to live without.

In the end, we see Jack finally adjusting to Outside, becoming an individual. But when we leave Ma, Donoghue leaves the readers with the uncomfortable sense that she will merely be moving from prison to prison for the rest of her life.

Room is one of those books that stays in your head long after you’ve finished reading it. Each time I read it or examine it, I always find something new that changes my perception on what Donoghue means and to me that’s what makes a special book.

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Beauty Queens

March 15, 2016 avn5224 2 Comments

This week, I will be reviewing the novel, Beauty Queens by Libba Bray. On the surface this book might seem like just another young adult fiction story, but its message is so much more impactful than most other books I’ve read from this genre. It confronts the truth behind our daily lives by dealing with race, sexism, and stereotypes, while managing to keep a light, sarcastic tone. This is especially important when dealing with these serious issues because this book is targeted primarily to teenage girls. It makes the important message accessible and appealing to them.

Libba Bray was born on March 11, 1964 and grew up in Denton, Texas. Her mother was a high school English teacher and her dad was a Presbyterian minister. Three weeks after her high school graduation, she was involved in a car accident that caused her to undergo thirteen surgeries over the span of six years to reconstruct her face. She has an artificial left eye because of the accident. She graduated from University of Texas, Austin in 1988 with a degree in Theater. Bray moved to New York City and worked for a publishing agency. There, she met her husband, who encouraged her to write a young adult novel. Bray published her first novel, A Great and Terrible Beauty in 2006, which became a New York Times bestseller. She wrote two more novels to complete the trilogy. Beauty Queens was published in 2011. She currently lives in New York with her husband and teenage son.

Fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream Pageant become stranded on a deserted island after their plane crashes with little food and water. This initially appears to set up a female version of Lord of the Flies. Considering the premise, a plane full of pageant contestants crash on a small tropical island, it seems like another excuse to pit girls against one another with teenage beauty queens tearing apart competition to fend for themselves while awaiting rescue. But Bray subverts that paradigm of girl-on-girl psychological fighting as a spectator sport, where the girls come together in time of crisis. She focuses on the way girls are portrayed by the media, jealous, competitive, and vindictive and turns that on its head. That’s how some of the girls start out because of the internalized misogyny and male gaze of the media. But while they may argue and bicker endlessly in the beginning, the girls discover more than competition in themselves and that’s when their friendships truly begin. The island serves as a place where the girls can get away from the society that pressures them into hurting themselves and each other. It’s a place where they realize that under the methodically constructed beauty pageant personas, they’re all just girls trying to grow up in a world that always wants them to be someone else.

The novel is told from multiple first person views, rotating between the beauty contestants. Here, John Oliver discusses the pressure and high expectations for beauty queens. Initially, every girl comes across as a caricature of the smiling picture of a beauty queen, each representing a certain stereotype. There’s the girl, who eats, lives and breathes pageants. There’s the lesbian. There’s the beautiful but painfully stupid girl, who panics when faced with something that hasn’t been practiced and memorized for interviews or pageants. There’s the black girl. There’s the sweetheart. There’s the disabled deaf girl. There’s the anti-pageant feminist who’s out to destroy the system that exploits women.

But slowly, the girls start to surprise us by diverting from their stereotypes as secrets emerge and realizations are made. As the story continues we realize that some of these girls don’t even know who they are behind their perfect pageant personalities. They’ve been doing this so long and feel so desperately the need to win, that they’ve become the images they think people want to see. When they become stuck on an island with the need to survive and with no one to watch or judge them, they have a terrifying world spread out before them. For the first time they get to decide who they are and who they want to be. The good girl learns it’s okay to be a little wild. The anti-pageant girl learns that wanting to be pretty isn’t a sign of weakness or shallowness. They learn about themselves as individuals. They learn how to be comfortable, with who they are. They learn what they really want out of life.

Even though these girls are girly-girls who care a great deal about their physical appearance, they are able to survive not despite their femininity but because of it. They turn their heels and bras into weapons. They show that femininity can be powerful.

It’s satirical with some crazy lines and ridiculous situations, but it’s only to highlight the media and society’s skewed expectations of young women. It has a surrealist quality to it that further emphasizes the ridiculous expectations placed on girls. It’s tongue-in-cheek funny with a touching tale of friendship, an empowering self-discovery story that turns stereotypes on their heads. I recommend this book to everyone.

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The Gift of Fear

February 11, 2016 avn5224 2 Comments

This week I will be reviewing The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker.

Out of all the books I’ve read in my life, this one has impacted me the most and definitely changed the way I travel through the world. I read it for the first time about a year ago during my senior year of high school and I re-read it over this past winter break.

Gavin de Becker is an expert on the prediction and management of violence. He designed the mosaic threat assessment systems used to screen threats to Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was appointed twice to the President’s Advisory Board at the United States Department of Justice. He also served two terms on the Governor’s Advisory Board at the California Department of Mental Health. He currently runs a personal security firm with a wide array of clients from battered women’s shelters to celebrities. His long list of impressive accomplishments makes him the perfect person to discuss the important issue of safety and prevention of violence.

“He had probably been watching her for a while.”

From the very first line, de Becker grabs your attention and holds onto it. Full of facts, case histories, statistics, and advice, it still reads like a thrilling novel. The Gift of fear breaks down violent situations into a step-by-step guide from, both an outside, expert perspective, and the surviving victims perspective. Each hour seventy-five women are raped in the United States, every few seconds a woman is beaten, and each day four hundred Americans suffer shooting injuries. Often times attackers, stalkers, and physical violence is framed as unpredictable. De Becker challenges the myth that most violent acts are random and shows that they usually have discernible motives and are preceded by clear warning signs. Underlying all of the stories, statistics, and expertise is the notion that humans have a more sophisticated violence detection system that most people realize. He attempts to bring awareness to this intuition, so that more people listen to it.

De Becker notes that victims of violence usually feel a sense of fear before any threat or violence takes place. They may distrust or ignore the fear, or they might take action to save themselves from harm. It’s that feeling that something just isn’t quite right for no consciously apparent reason. These survival signals are often ignored. This book is about the prediction of violence-the things mostly women can do to avoid being the victims of assaults and rapes and beatings. But not in an offensive way telling women how to dress, but how women can be smarter about what they notice and how to react to them. In a similar manner, Louis CK satirically notes the danger women face in daily life. The book teaches how to identify the warning signals of a potential attacker and recommends strategies for dealing with the problem before it becomes life threatening. The case studies are gripping and suspenseful, and include tactics for dealing with similar situations. Each chapter involves different situations, stranger violence, domestic violence, stalking, workplace violence, and school violence. This information is of vital importance because it could save lives.

His first example tells the story of Kelly, who was brutally assaulted and raped and whose intuition saved her life. Kelly recounts to de Becker how a charismatic man charmed his way into her apartment under the pretense of helping her with her groceries. From the moment she heard his voice, she knew something sounded wrong, but she pushed away her fears and even, “felt guilty about her suspicion.” Each time she said ‘no, she didn’t need help,’ he pushed until she said yes each time. Eventually they entered her apartment and he had all the power. After the rape, he left the room saying, “I promise I’m not going to hurt you.” While he was in the kitchen, she snuck out of her room and across the hall to her neighbor’s. While discussing her ordeal with de Becker she mentions, “I knew that if I stayed in my room, he was going to come back from the kitchen and kill me, but I don’t know how I was so certain.” Going back in her memory through the event she pinpoints each exact moment that caused her to flee her apartment at that moment. She listened to her gut and it saved her life. De Becker further explains this specific example on Oprah.

De Becker gives real examples of the patterns in action, thought, and belief of criminals and he explains why they are successful.

He outlines several pre-incident indicators that when properly identified, can help avoid violence.

Forced teaming. When a person implies that he has something in common with the victim when it isn’t really true. This occurs when he speaks in “we” terms to force a false sense of trust.

Too many details. A lie usually includes an excessive amount of details to make themselves sound more credible to the victim.

Loan sharking. Unsolicited help to the victim so that they feel obliged to reciprocate a gesture.

Unsolicited promise. A promise to do or not do something when no promise has been asked for. This most likely means that the promise will be broken.

Discounting the word no. Refusing to accept rejection even for the tiniest reason.

Charm and niceness. De Becker says it best himself.

“We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Niceness often always has a discoverable motive.” Niceness is a form of manipulation.

De Becker highlights these pre-incident indicators to recognize them when they happen in your own life.

“Trust that what causes alarm probably should, because when it comes to danger, intuition is always right in at least two important ways. 1. It is always in response to something. 2. It always has your best interest at heart.”

Learning to predict and recognize violence is the best step in preventing it. This book could save your life.

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Americanah

January 27, 2016 avn5224 2 Comments

For my passion blog for the spring semester I will be reviewing and analyzing a new book each week. Some I read over the summer, some I read over break, and some I will read during the duration of this semester.

The first book I will be discussing is one of my all time favorites, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. If you’ve read my blog from the fall, you know I’ve brought her name up several times either from her presence in Beyonce’s Flawless or from my favorite TED talk, which you should seriously watch.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an African writer born in Nigeria on September 15, 1977. She was the fifth out of six children to Igbo parents, Grace Ifeoma, and James Nwoye Adichie. Adichie grew up in Nsukka. Her father worked at the University of Nigeria as the first professor of statistics, who later became Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Her mother was the first woman registrar at the University of Nigeria. She completed her secondary education at the school attached to the University. She studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria. At nineteen, she left to study in the United States. She studied communication at Drexel University for two years, then studied communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University. She completed a master’s degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins. During her time at Eastern Connecticut State University she wrote her first novel Purple Hibiscus, which won much critical acclaim. She now divides her time between Nigeria and the United States.

Americanah tells the story of a strong-willed Nigerian woman Ifemelu, who leaves her home in Nigeria for American to pursue her studies. She endures years of near poverty before graduating from college, starting a blog, and winning a fellowship at Princeton, before coming full circle and returning to Nigeria. Americanah is about being black in the 21^st century. It’s about first love. It’s about growing up. It’s about returning home. Adichie examines how blackness functions in America, Nigeria, and Britain, but Americanah is not only a novel about race, it also attempts to understand universal human experience.

Ifemelu and Obinze meet and fall in love in Nigeria, while in high school, stay together through university until striking in Nigeria cause them to pursue education elsewhere. These characters are not those of stereotypical African poverty. They do not flee war or starvation. They leave for choice and opportunity. Obinze heads to Britain, while Ifemelu travels to America. When they do reunite many years later back in Nigeria nothing is like they remember. It’s about the universal experience of leaving home and creating home in your mind. But home is constantly changing and you are constantly changing when you leave home. Soon enough you are different and home is different so its not home anymore.

The story is told in flashbacks through both Obinze’s and Ifemelu’s point of view from their school days growing up to modern day until they eventually meet again in Nigeria. When we first meet Ifemelu, she’s having her hair braided at an African salon in Trenton, NJ. She has to travel a great distance just to find a hair salon that get work with her hair. Right away hair serves as a greater metaphor about black experience in America. Ifemelu does not chemically treat her hair to match the white standard of beauty in America. This is especially relevant because until recently, the U.S. military did not recognize natural black hair as acceptable. But at this point, she is a successful writer, but she has to travel to a poor predominately black neighborhood. But this wasn’t always the case. Ifemelu chemically treats her hair until her scalp burns. Eventual she comes to the revelation and embraces her natural hair Ifemelu reclaims her own African identity.

Ifemelu’s journey in America is directed by experiences of race that wouldn’t seem new to black Americans, but they’re new to her. Ifemelu’s experiences eventually manifest into a blog entitled, “Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black.” She makes astute revelations about the way race unconsciously seems into our daily existence. Her observations are particularly sharp because as she notes, “I don’t think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to this country.” Race confuses her because it is an imaginary construct with actual consequences. Race dictates and drives her life in America, but Ifemelu notices that white Americans are scared about talking about race and often claim that it doesn’t exist.

“In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here’s the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven’t lynched somebody then you can’t be called a racist. If you’re not a bloodsucking monster, then you can’t be called a racist. Somebody has to be able to say that racists are not monsters.”

Ifemelu unapologetically describes the more nuanced racism she experiences that one wouldn’t understand unless you experienced it. Here are some more articles that further explain this notion. Adichie presents the uncomfortable realities of our life right in front of our face. It is always genuine. She doesn’t try to sugar coat it because the life of a black person in America is not sugar coated.

It is even in the process of becoming a movie staring Lupita Nyong’o. This novel describes the human experience of growing up and leaving home and finding love and yourself. It also describes race how it functions in the U.S. because as black people living in America, race centrally dictates their life.

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