The Island of Doctor Moreau
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Island of Doctor Moreau | |
 First edition cover |
|
| Author | H. G. Wells |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Heinemann |
| Publication date | 1896 |
| Media type | print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 209 p. |
| ISBN | NA |
The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells.
Contents |
[edit] The novel
When the novel was written in the late 19th century, Britain's scientific community was engulfed by debates on animal vivisection. Interest groups were even formed to tackle the issue: the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection was formed two years after the publication of the novel.
[edit] Summary
It begins with the protagonist, an upper class gentleman named Edward Prendick, finding himself shipwrecked in the ocean. A passing ship takes him aboard, and a doctor named Montgomery revives him. He explains to Prendick that they are bound for an unnamed island where he works, and that the animals aboard the ship are travelling with him. Prendick also meets a grotesque, bestial native named M'ling, who appears to be Montgomery's manservant.
When they arrive on the island, however, both the captain of the ship and Doctor Montgomery refuse to take Prendick with either of them, stranding him between the ship and the island. The crew pushes him back into the lifeboat from which they rescued him. When they see that the ship truly intends to abandon him, the islanders take pity and end up coming back for him. Montgomery introduces him to Doctor Moreau, a cold and precise man who conducts research on the island. After unloading the animals from the boat, they decide to house Prendick in an outer room of the enclosure in which they live. Prendick is exceedingly curious about what exactly Moreau researches on the island, especially after he locks the inner part of the enclosure without explaining why. Prendick suddenly remembers that he has heard of Moreau, and that he had been an eminent physiologist in London before a journalist exposed his gruesome experiments in vivisection.
The next day, Moreau begins working on a puma, and its anguished cries drive Prendick out into the jungle. As 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. He panics and flees, and in a desperate attempt of defense he manages to stun his attacker, 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 draft.
Prendick awakes the next morning with the previous night's activities fresh in his mind. Seeing that the inner door 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 behaviour and praise for Moreau. Suddenly, Moreau bursts into the colony, and Prendick escapes out the back into the jungle. He makes for the ocean, where he plans to drown himself rather than allow Moreau to experiment on him. Moreau and Montgomery confront him, however, and Moreau explains that the creatures, the Beast Folk, are animals he has vivisected to resemble humans. Prendick goes back to the enclosure, where Moreau explains to him that he has been on the island for eleven years now, striving to make a complete transformation from animal to human. Apparently, his only reason for the pain he inflicts is scientific curiosity. Prendick accepts the explanation as it is and begins life on the island.
One day, as he and Montgomery are walking around the island, they come across a half-eaten rabbit. Eating flesh and tasting blood is one of the strongest prohibitions in the Law, so Montgomery and Moreau become very worried. Moreau calls an assembly of the Beast Men. He identifies the Leopard Man (the same one that chased Prendick the first time he wandered into the jungle) as the transgressor. The Leopard Man flees, but when the group corners him in some undergrowth, Prendick takes pity and shoots him, sparing him a return to Moreau's operating table. Moreau is furious but can do nothing about the situation.
As time passes, Prendick begins to deaden himself to the grotesqueness of the Beast Folk. One day, however, he is shaken out of this stagnation when the puma rips free of its restraints and escapes from the lab. Moreau pursues it, but the two end up killing each other. Montgomery falls apart, and having gotten himself quite drunk, decides to share his alcohol with the Beast Men. Prendick tries to stop him, but Montgomery threatens violence and leaves the enclosure alone with bottle in hand. Later in the night, Prendick hears a commotion outside; he rushes out, and sees that Montgomery appears to have been involved in some scuffle with the Beast Folk. He dies in front of Prendick, who is now the last remaining human on the island. After the death, Prendick notices the sky behind him grow brighter and sees that the enclosure is on fire. He realizes that he had knocked over a lamp while rushing out to find Montgomery and that he has no chance of saving any of the provisions located inside the enclosure. He suddenly decides to flee from the island but notices that Montgomery has burnt the only boats, in order to prevent their return to mankind.
He does not attempt to claim Moreau's vacant throne on the island, but he instead settles for living with the Beast Folk as he attempts to build and provision a raft with which he intends to leave the island. He lives on the island for 10 months after the deaths of Moreau and Montgomery. As the time goes by, the Beast Folk increasingly revert to their original animalistic instincts, beginning to hunt the island's rabbits, returning to walking on all fours and leaving their shared living areas for the wild. They also gradually cease to follow Prendick's instructions and eventually kill his faithful companion, a Beast-Man created from a dog. Luckily for him, eventually a ship inhabited by two corpses drifts onto the beach. Prendick dumps the bodies, gets supplies, and leaves the next morning.
He is picked up by a ship only three days later, but when he tells his story the crew thinks he is mad. To prevent himself from being declared insane, he pretends to have no memory of the year he spent between the first shipwreck and his final rescue. When he gets back to England, however, he finds that he is rigidly uncomfortable around other humans, because he has an irrational suspicion that they are all Beast Folk in danger of sudden and violent reversion to animalism. He contents himself with solitude and the study of chemistry and astronomy, finding peace above in the heavenly bodies.
[edit] Adaptations
The novel has been made into a movie on three occasions:
- Island of Lost Souls (1933 film) with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi.
- The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977 film) with Burt Lancaster and Michael York.
- This was turned into a novel by Joseph Silva and published by Ace.
- The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996 film) with Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer
[edit] Other
- The Art of H. G. Wells, by Ricardo Garijo, is a 2006 trading card adaptation of three stories by Wells, the second of which is The Island of Dr Moreau.[1]
[edit] References
- In a one-shot comic, Van Helsing: From Beneath The Rue Morgue, Gabriel Van Helsing battles with the creatures of Dr. Moreau. This event can be placed before the events of the book because at the end, we see Dr. Moreau escaping with one of his creations, stating that "the world lacks vision", and that he should "move to an island perhaps. Somewhere drastic, like... the South Seas...".
[edit] External links
- The Island of Doctor Moreau at Project Gutenberg
- Reading of The Island of Doctor Moreau
- Text of the novel
- 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
- Jurassic Park: Horizontal Evolution by Harrison Mujica-Jenkins at latephilosophers.com
- Jörg, Daniele (2003). "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—Dr. Moreau Goes to Hollywood". Public Understanding of Science 12 (3): 297–305. doi:. 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.
