Why do the gawkers see John as a wild animal?

John is beating himself with a whip.... something that becomes a source of entertainment, as the people believe that it is a stunt.

"The whip," answered a hundred voices confusedly. "Do the whipping stunt. Let's see the whipping stunt." Then, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, "We-want-the whip," shouted a group at the end of the line. "We-want-the whip." Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot- fashion, again and again, with an ever-growing volume of sound, until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other word was being spoken. "We-want-the whip." They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the unanimity, the sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, it seemed, have gone on for hours-almost indefinitely.

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