Cry Of The Elephant Man

We are in danger of losing our identities as unique beings created in the image of God. Our culture, not wanting to answer to a higher authority, tries to expel God from the planet but in the process strips off the very image that makes us human. If we officiate at the death of God, we will also be forced to preside over the funeral of man. The good news is that despite the loud voices declaring that we are just evolved animals, the vast majority of us behave as if we are special. Since the characteristics that make humans unique are found nowhere else on the planet, we are compelled to look to the heavens. We have a choice; we can find significance running with the pack or in becoming children of God. We can howl at the moon or offer prayers to our Father, but either way we will end up worshiping our maker. Dr. Strandness explores what it means to be created in the image of God by examining those qualities that are universally recognized as unique to humankind. He makes the case that these characteristics have a heavenly origin and can only be adequately explained by a Biblical understanding of humans as Gods image-bearers.

John Merrick had lived for more than twenty years imprisoned in a body that condemned him to a miserable life in the workhouse and to humiliation as a circus sideshow freak. But beneath that tragic exterior, within that enormous and deformed head, thrived the soul of a poet, the heart of a dreamer, the longings of a man. Merrick was doomed to suffer forever—until the kind Dr. Treves gave him the first real home in the London Hospital and the town's most beautiful and esteemed actress made possible Merrick's cherished dream of human contact—and love.

The story of Merrick's (the Elephant Man's) life published in 1923 is the source of most of what is known about the man, and forms the basis of the films, television adaptations and plays that followed. However, the story about Merrick is only one of many of Doctor Treves' reminiscences, each of them absorbing and fascinating. This book gives a great insight into medical changes and problems at the time and forms the memoirs of a great doctor with a distinguished medical career.

A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. This version includes an audio book: listen to the story as you read. Written for Learners of English by Tim Vicary. He is not beautiful. His mother does not want him, children run away from him. People laugh at him, and call him 'The Elephant Man'. Then someone speaks to him - and listens to him! At the age of 27, Joseph Merrick finds a friend for the first time in his life. This is a true and tragic story. It is also a famous film.

Joseph Carey Merrick, born in Leicester on 5th August 1852, is better known as the Elephant Man. Through horrible physical deformities which were almost impossible to describe, he spent much of his life exhibited as a fairground freak until even nineteenth-century sensibilities could take no more. Hounded, persecuted and starving, he ended up one day at Liverpool Street Station where he was rescued, housed and fed by the distinguished surgeon Frederick Treves. To Treves' surprise, he discovered during the course of their friendship that lurking beneath the mass of Merrick's corrupting flesh lived a spirit that was as courageous as it had been tortured, and a nature as gentle and dignified as it had been deprived and tormented. The subject of several books, a Broadway hit, and a film, Joseph Merrick has become a part of popular mythology. Here, in this fully revised edition containing much fresh information, are the true and unromanticised facts of his life. An extraordinary and moving story, set amongst the brutal realities of the Victorian world, telling of a tragic individual and his survival against overwhelming odds.

As famous today as he was in his time, here is the whole story of the Elephant Man.

This play was suggested by the life of John Merrick, known as the Elephant Man. It is recounted by Sir Frederick Treves in The Elephant Man and other reminiscences, Cassell, 1923. -- Introd. note.