The Elephant Man

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Consider the relationship between an imperialist metropole and its colonies. Historically, how did imperialism shape the minds of those living in the metropole? What does colonization imply about the relationship between those who live in the metropole and those who live in a colony?

Teaching Suggestion: This Short Answer question invites students to consider the historical context of the play in relation to the theme Imperialism and Western Self-Superiority. Pomerance’s play, which is set in the late-19th-century Victorian Era, touches on the relationship between England as the metropole of the British empire. References to colonialism abound in Pomerance’s text: In Belgium, the “Pinheads” are forced to celebrate King Leopold II’s colonization of Africa; Miss Sandwich mentions her work in Niger and Ceylon, both of which were colonies of the British empire; and several characters reference Gordon, a colonizer who was killed in the British colonized African city of Khartoum. Pomerance’s references to colonial exploitation are juxtaposed against the backdrop of the metropole of London, England, where concepts focused on social and biological hierarchy were used in order to perpetuate racist ideology and Western superiority.