die like a normal person

Luciano 2022-04-20 09:01:18

The hypocrisy of human nature shown in The Elephant Man may be more thorough than the warmth of the world. I don't know if this is the director's intention or inadvertent, or it's just my subjectivity. The kiss of the actress, the applause of the audience in the theater, has a deliberately unreal feeling. Only the doctor's wife sincerely sheds tears for Molek, the head nurse puts herself in his shoes, and the self-defeating introspection makes the doctor truly a respectable person. The rest are just vain and arrogant actors, playing the role of good people with lame acting skills. It was not out of sympathy that those gentlemen and ladies in fine attire visited Molek, nor even out of curiosity. Visiting the Elephant Man is nothing more than a trend, no different from a new bow tie or a lady's changeable hairstyle, it's just a trendier way to perform kindness than attending a charity gala.
You see how the lady's hand trembled while holding the teacup, her respectable husband's face was stiff, and he could hardly maintain the grace of a gentleman. Could it be that Molek can't tell the truth from the fake? He who is used to being hurt should have a more sensitive heart. I think it's not that he doesn't understand, he just doesn't want to expose it. Even false goodwill was so precious to him. He was once despised and hated, and was treated as an animal in the circus for people to watch. Maybe even he himself has lost his confidence as a human being. Molek stopped trying to communicate, he hid his wisdom—perhaps ignorance was a blessing at this time. But he does understand, saying "people are always afraid of what they don't understand". People can't really understand Molek, and in fact not many people try to understand him, but Molek understands the injustice of the world to him with the most forgiving heart. I even think he takes himself too lowly. He was proud of his mother's beauty, worried if his looks had disappointed her, but never mentioned why they were separated; he was grateful to everyone who treated him politely, but never thought it was who he was Treated as it should; he never seemed to resent the cruelty of others, and took all the blame for himself. Perhaps, Molek is just too aware of the weakness of human nature: in the face of people who are less fortunate than himself, there is always a sense of superiority, and sympathy and charity are inseparable. Does his tolerance of hypocrites also show that he has no expectations of true nobility?
The director is kind, and the movie ends with a hopeful verse where he says everything is eternal, "Never. Nothing will die. The Stream flows, the wind blows, the cloud fleets, the heart beats." The movie ends like that Implicitly, but if we remember the dialogue from earlier, sleeping on your back like a normal human being is deadly for Molek's deformed body, and he will suffocate in his sleep. Even surrounded by a lot of goodness or hypocrisy, Molek lived the closest part of his life to his kind, but he couldn't live like an ordinary man after all. But he was able to die like a normal human being. This is the ending Molek arranged for himself. On the last night, he completed a model of his own little church, and no one disturbed his sleep in this sanctuary built almost on the basis of his imagination.

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Extended Reading

The Elephant Man quotes

  • Dr. Frederick Treves: Am I a good man? Or a bad man? That's all...

  • John Merrick: I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!