The Island of Doctor Moreau

For other uses, see The Island of Doctor Moreau (disambiguation).

The Island of Doctor Moreau
First edition cover
Author(s)	H. G. Wells
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction
Publisher	Heinemann, Stone & Kimball
Publication date	1896
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	209 p.
ISBN	NA
Preceded by	The Wonderful Visit
Followed by	The Wheels of Chance

The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells, who called the novel "an exercise in youthful blasphemy." The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat who is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, who creates sentient beings from animals via vivisection. The novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature.

The novel

When the novel was written in 1896, there was much discussion in Europe about degeneration and animal vivisection. Interest groups were formed to address the issue: the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection was formed two years after the publication of the novel.

The Island of Doctor Moreau is the account of one Edward Prendick, an Englishman with a scientific education, who is shipwrecked. A passing ship takes him aboard, and a man named Montgomery revives him. The ship is bound for an unnamed island. Prendick also meets a grotesque, bestial native named M'ling, who appears to be Montgomery's manservant. In addition, the ship is transporting a number of animals which belong to Montgomery.

As the ship approaches the island, the captain demands Prendick leave the ship with Montgomery. However Montgomery explains that he will not be able to host Prendick either. Despite this, the captain leaves Prendick in a dingy, after unloading Montgomery and his animals, and sails away. Seeing that the captain has abandoned Prendick, Montgomery takes pity and rescues him. It is explained that ships rarely pass the island so Prendick will be housed in an outer room of an enclosed compound. The island belongs to a Dr. Moreau. Prendick remembers that he has heard of Moreau, formerly an eminent physiologist in London whose gruesome experiments in vivisection had been publicly exposed.

The next day, Moreau begins working on a puma. Prendick gathers that Moreau is performing a painful experiment on the animal, and its anguished cries drive Prendick out into the jungle. While he wanders, he comes upon a group of people who seem human but have an unmistakable resemblance to hogs. As he walks back to the enclosure, he suddenly realizes he is being followed by a figure in the jungle. He panics and flees, and the figure chases. As his pursuer bears down on him, Prendick manages to stun him with a stone, and observes the pursuer is a monstrous hybrid of animal and man. When he returns to the enclosure and questions Montgomery, Montgomery refuses to be open with him. After failing to get an explanation, Prendick finally gives in and takes a sleeping draught.

Prendick awakes the next morning with the previous night's activities fresh in his mind. Seeing that the door to Moreau's operating room has been left unlocked, he walks in to find a humanoid form lying in bandages on the table before he is ejected by a shocked and angry Moreau. He believes that Moreau has been vivisecting humans and that he is the next test subject. He flees into the jungle, where he meets an Ape Man who takes him to a colony of similarly half-human/half-animal creatures. The leader, a large gray thing named the Sayer of the Law, has him recite a strange litany called the Law that involves prohibitions against bestial behavior and praise for Moreau.

Suddenly, Moreau bursts into the colony looking for Prendick, but Prendick escapes to the jungle. He makes for the ocean, where he plans to drown himself rather than allow Moreau to experiment on him. But Moreau explains that the creatures, the Beast Folk, were not formerly men, but rather animals. Prendick returns to the enclosure, where Moreau explains to him that he has been on the island for eleven years and has been striving to make a complete transformation from animal to human. He explains that while he is getting closer to perfection, his experiments have a habit of reverting to their animal form. Moreau regards the pain he inflicts as insignificant, and an unavoidable side effect in the name of his scientific experiments.

One day Prendick and Montgomery encounter a half-eaten rabbit. Since eating flesh and tasting blood are strong prohibitions, Moreau calls an assembly of the Beast Men and identifies the Leopard Man (the same one that chased Prendick the first time he wandered into the jungle) as the transgressor. Knowing that he will be sent back to Moreau's compound for more painful sessions of vivisection, the Leopard Man flees. Eventually the group corners him in some undergrowth, but Prendick takes pity and shoots him in order to spare him from the vivisection.

Prendick also believes that although the Leopard Man was seen breaking several laws such as drinking water bent down like an animal, chasing men (Prendick) and running on all fours, the Leopard Man was not solely responsible for the deaths of the rabbits, but it was also the Hyena-Swine, the next most dangerous beast man on the island. Moreau is furious that Prendick killed the Leopard Man but can do nothing about the situation.

As time passes, Prendick becomes inured to the grotesqueness of the Beast Folk. But one day the puma rips free of its restraints and escapes from the lab. Moreau pursues it, but the two end up killing each other. Montgomery breaks down and decides to share his alcohol with the Beast Men. Prendick resolves to leave the island, but later hears a commotion outside in which Montgomery dies after a scuffle with the Beast Folk.

At the same time, the compound burns down because Prendick has knocked over a lamp. With no chance of saving any of the provisions stored in the enclosure, Prendick realizes that during the night Montgomery has also destroyed the only boats on the island.

Prendick lives with the Beast Folk on the island for months after the deaths of Moreau and Montgomery. As the time goes by, the Beast Folk increasingly revert to their original animal instincts, beginning to hunt the island's rabbits, returning to walking on all fours, and leaving their shared living areas for the wild.

They cease to follow Prendick's instructions and eventually kill his faithful companion, a Beast Man created from a dog. Luckily for him, since his efforts to build a raft have been unsuccessful, a boat that carries two corpses drifts onto the beach (perhaps the captain of the ship that picked Prendick up and a sailor). Prendick uses the boat to leave the island and is picked up three days later. But when he tells his story he is thought to be mad, so he feigns amnesia. Back to England, Prendick is no longer comfortable in the presence of humans, who seem to him to be about to revert to the animal state. He leaves London and lives in near-solitude in the countryside, devoting himself to chemistry as well as astronomy, in the study of which he finds some peace.

Main characters

• Edward Prendick - Narrator and protagonist
• Doctor Moreau - A vivisectionist who has fled scandal to live on a remote island in the Pacific to pursue his research
• Montgomery - Moreau's assistant and Prendick's rescuer; an alcoholic who feels some sympathy for the Beast Folk
• Beast Folk - Animals upon which Moreau has experimented, giving them human traits. They include:
  • M'ling - Montgomery's bear-based servant.
  • Sayer of the Law - An unidentified, silvery-haired Beast Man who is the keeper of the Law (a code of "non-bestial" behaviour by which Moreau insists the Beast Folk abide).
  • Leopard-Man - A leopard-based rebel who, in killing and eating a rabbit, breaks the Law.
  • Hyena-Swine - A carnivorous hybrid of hyena and pig who becomes Prendick's enemy in the wake of Moreau's death.
  • Satyr-Man - A goat creature; described as unsettling and "Satanic" in form by Prendick.
  • Fox-Bear Witch - A female hybrid of fox and bear who passionately supports the Law; Prendick quickly takes a dislike to her.
  • Sloth Creature - A small, pink sloth-based creation; described by Prendick as resembling a flayed child.
  • Dog-Man - A Beast Man created from a St. Bernard, who, near the end of the book, is Prendick's faithful companion.
  • Ape-Man - A monkey or ape creature that considers himself equal to Prendick, who refers to himself and Prendick as 'Five Men' because they both have five fingers on each hand which is uncommon among the Beast Folk; the first Beast Man, other than M'ling, that Prendick speaks to. He has what he refers to as 'Big Thinks' which, on his return to England, Prendick likens to a priest's sermon at the pulpit.

Adaptations

The novel has been made into a movie on five occasions:

• Ile d'Epouvante (The Island of Terror) was a 1913 French silent film (also spelled L'Ile d'Epouvante and Isle d'epouvante). The 23-minute two-reeler film was directed by Joe Hamman in 1911 and then released in 1913. By late 1913, the film had been picked up by U.S. distributor George Kleine and renamed The Island of Terror for its release in Chicago.
• Island of Lost Souls (1933 film) with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi.
• Terror Is a Man (1959 film) with Francis Lederer, Greta Thyssen, and Richard Derr. This Filipino film, directed by Gerardo de Leon, was reissued in the United States in 1964 as Blood Creature. Leon partnered with Eddie Romero to direct and release two follow-up films in 1968: Brides of Blood and Mad Doctor of Blood Island. All three were produced by Lynn-Romero Productions.
• The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977 film) with Burt Lancaster and Michael York. This film was turned into a novel by Joseph Silva and published by Ace.
• The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996 film) with Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis and Ron Perlman.

An amateur adaptation of Wells' novel, The Island of Doctor Agor (1971 film), was made in 1971 by a then-13-year-old Tim Burton. The Simpsons also devoted a segment of their Treehouse of Horror XIII as a parody. Instead of transforming animals into men as Dr. Moreau does, Dr. Hibbert instead transforms the residents of Springfield into animals.

Further reading

• Canadas, Ivan. “Going Wilde: Prendick, Montgomery and Late-Victorian Homosexuality in The Island of Doctor Moreau.” JELL: Journal of the English Language and Literature Association of Korea, 56.3 (June 2010): 461-485.

• Hoad, Neville. “Cosmetic Surgeons of the Social: Darwin, Freud, and Wells and the Limits of Sympathy on The Island of Dr. Moreau”, in: Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion, Ed. Lauren Berlant. London & New York: Routledge, 2004. 187-217.

• Reed, John R., “The Vanity of Law in The Island of Doctor Moreau”, in: H. G. Wells under Revision: Proceedings of the International H. G. Wells Symposium: London, July 1986, Ed. Patrick Parrinder & Christopher Rolfe. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna UP / London and Toronto: Associated UPs, 1990. 134-44.

• Wells, H. G. The Island of Dr. Moreau, Ed. Steven Palmé. Dover Thrift Editions. New York: Dover Publications, 1996.

• Wells, H. G. The Island of Doctor Moreau: A Critical Text of the 1896 London First Edition, with Introduction and Appendices, Ed. Leon Stover. The Annotated H.G. Wells, 2. Jefferson, N.C., and London: McFarland, 1996.

External links

• "The One Hundred Years of Doctor Moreau(1997)" by Jaime Perales Contreras (On different film versions of H.G. Wells Novel. Published in Estudios Magazine, Spring 1997. (In Spanish))

• The Island of Doctor Moreau at Project Gutenberg
• Reading of The Island of Doctor Moreau
• A draft of the 1996 films screenplay, dated April 26th, 1994
• The Island of Lost Souls (1933) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) at the Internet Movie Database
• Jörg, Daniele (2003). "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—Dr. Moreau Goes to Hollywood"Public Understanding of Science 12 (3): 297–305. doi:10.1177/0963662503123008. http://pus.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/3/297.  Compares the three adaptations of the novel, focuses on the scientists and the science in the film, considering the year of the production and what was known about genes and cells at the time.