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The Island of Doctor Moreau

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The Island of Doctor Moreau
First edition cover
AuthorH. G. Wells
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherHeinemann, Stone & Kimball [1]
Publication date
1896
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages209 p.
ISBNNA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
Preceded byThe Wonderful Visit 
Followed byThe Wheels of Chance 

The Island of Doctor Moreau is a 1896 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells.

The novel

When the novel was written in the late 19th century (1896), European society was absorbed with concerns about degeneration, and 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.

It begins with the protagonist, an upper class gentleman who was 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 traveling 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 draught.

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 behavior 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 the operating table in Moreau's "House of Pain". Prendick also believes that, although the Leopard Man was seen breaking several laws such as drinking water bent down like an animal, chasing men (i.e. Prendick) and running on all fours, he was not responsible for the deaths of the rabbits, but it was the Hyena-Swine, the other most dangerous beast man on the island. He doesn't, however, tell anyone this. Moreau is furious that Prendick killed the Leopard Man 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.

Main characters

  • Edward Prendick – the novel's narrator and protagonist
  • Doctor Moreau – scandal-hit vivisectionist who has relocated to a remote island to pursue his experiments
  • Montgomery – Moreau's assistant, a medical doctor
  • Beast Folk – animals upon which Moreau has experimented in order to give them human traits. They include:
  • M'ling – Montgomery's dog-based servant
  • Sayer of the Law – 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

Adaptations

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

Other

  • The final (25th) episode of Sliders third season, This Slide of Paradise is based on The Island of Doctor Moreau
  • Australian author Jack Heath wrote a short prequel to The Island of Doctor Moreau which suggested that Montgomery might be one of Moreau's creations. Heath's story (entitled Flesh) was first published on The Book Post in 2010.[2]
  • In a one-shot comic, Van Helsing: From Beneath the Rue Morgue, Gabriel Van Helsing battles with the creatures of Dr. Moreau. At the end of the book, Moreau escapes 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...".
  • According to Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh, the call and response chorus from "Jocko Homo" ("Are we not Men? / We are Devo!") is also inspired by Island of Lost Souls.
  • Monster Island, a playable area in the MMORPG Champions Online, features Dr. Moreau's son, who continues his father's research, creating beast men of his own, including a super-intelligent Gorilla named Dr. Silverback. Silverback has rejected his creator's ways and become a hero.
  • The second series of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's comic series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen features Doctor Moreau prominently. Moreau, having survived the events of the novel, has relocated to England at the behest of British Intelligence. He is revealed as the creator of anthropomorphic characters from Rupert Bear, Wind in the Willows and the stories of Beatrix Potter, among other series, and performs anachronistic research in biological warfare. Prendick also appears and is shown to have gone insane due to his experiences on the island, still fearing humans to be Beast-Men in disguise.

References

  1. ^ Facsimile of the original 1st edition
  2. ^ http://blog.taramoss.com/index.php?itemid=388
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