The Island of Dr Moreau by HG Wells

In my personal opinion, ‘The Island of Dr Moreau’ is HG Wells’ most perfect novel. In comparison, novels like ‘The Invisible Man’ and ‘War of the Worlds’ are close, but they do not have the scare factor, the horror qualities and the existential dread that ‘The Island of Dr Moreau’ has. Now, I know that many people have not actually read this book in comparison to his more well-known ones like ‘The Time Machine’. So I will have to ask you to read the book before you read the article as that will be the only way you will actually understand it and also, look out for spoilers. If we are breaking this book down then I am going to need all the information I can get and honestly, for such a short book, there is a lot of information there. From Edward Prendrick’s first meeting with the mysterious Dr Moreau to the rising of the creatures, there is tons of great themes to be analysed that have mystified and terrified readers for a over a century. Welcome to HG Wells’ only horror novel: ‘The Island of Dr Moreau’.

The Plot

The plot is simple, but also has elements of an almost dystopian atmosphere in it. Edward Prendrick is rescued upon a ship and taken to a weird island belonging to a man named Dr Moreau. Our protagonist realises he remembers that he knows the name of the disgraced biologist who disappeared from academic life. It turns out he has set up his own laboratory on this remote island in the middle of nowhere. Prendrick witnesses horrific experiments on animals being fused with humans, being fused with other animals. They are not quite animal and not quite human and as of yet, none of them have been a major success. The problem occurs when the animal-human fusions that did survive start to fight back. They start to unionise. It is happening slowly but it is happening. Edward Prendrick has an amount of pity for these creatures being shunned by their master in a ‘Frankenstein’ style. But unlike the monster who seeks out Frankenstein for a talk, the creatures seek out to kill their master. The book eventually erupts into absolute chaos with Edward Prendrick lodged in the middle. It is an action-packed horror novel, fast-moving with gothic, dystopian and futuristic elements, it is a fantastically simple storyline that scares us even today.

Into the Book

There are many wild themes in this book and one of the most prominent has to be the apathy that Dr Moreau has towards his creations and the amorality of the scientific world. This is a theme that is also viewed in ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ as we have no idea what the true intentions were at the moment of conception. Dr Moreau seems like a pariah, unfairly treated by the moral religious Victorian Scientific world and, like Dr Jekyll, he ultimately fails but keeps on pretending like he didn’t until it is too late. I think the part of the book that shows this best is when he is actually creating the creatures. Whilst Edward Prendrick is on the edge of his seat with nerves and anxiety, the wails of pain from the creations as they come to new life has absolutely no impact on Dr Moreau. He is completely unmoved, showcasing the true extent of his apathy. It is a brilliant technique employed by HG Wells to depict the corruption of ideals. Not so much seen in ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ the corruption of ideals through emotions (or the lack thereof) is something that is contrasted between Prendrick and Moreau in the book so much with Montgomery remaining in that dead centre between them. Unknowing, he leads Prendrick straight to where he does not want to be. Whilst Prendrick’s mind cannot handle the torment of the wailing, Moreau demonstrates calm but in a murderous and sociopathic way rather than a peaceful way and this sets the reader too, on edge.

“I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world”

- The Island of Dr Moreau

Another key theme in this text is the similarities between beast and man. Now, back in the Victorian Era we had a very important publication take form in 1859. Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ was published to an audience of critics and naysayers. The Victorian folk were very sure that God had created Man at the top of the scale and all animals beneath, but Charles Darwin taught us that this is not only not the case entirely but that we might have got it entirely wrong as to where we actually come from. In the novel ‘The Island of Dr Moreau’ this is explored through the bestial notions of anger, resentment, pain etc. These emotions felt by both beast and animal were only the tip of the iceberg for the representation of the closeness between animal and man. It presses the representations of man and beast together, making one almost non-discernible from the other. It becomes one of the same thing, possibly angering the public who were initially offended by Darwin’s original text.

“An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie."

- The Island of Dr Moreau

Finally we have the combined themes of the grotesque and pain. As humans, we are designed to feel disgust for the grotesque and empathy for pain and so, when we put both of these together we get a man like Edward Prendrick who, when he initially sees the grotesque nature of the creatures is disgusted. But, ultimately, he begins to feel empathy towards their pain and it is not just the wailing which sends him towards the empathy scale, it is also the emotional pain and the abandonment that he feels for. This emotional pain is caused by the man he once understood as a scientist pushed out by society. Therefore, Prendrick’s feelings here might be difficult for him to understand, but it is clear for the reader to see that Prendrick is a better man than his host. He has none of that scientific apathy that characterises the sociopathic tendencies of the high-intelligence and low-emotion protagonists of gothic novels from the 19th century.

“It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.”

- The Island of Dr Moreau

Why It’s a Masterpiece

Many people regard this novel as being down the queue of HG Wells’ novels. Many people regard this novel as not being as good as his pure Sci-Fi novels such as ‘Time Machine’ and ‘War of the Worlds’ and yet, I have to argue that not only is this book very good in comparison to both of those, it is by far his only real pure horror novel. The fright it causes by pure possibility alone is something extraordinary. He creates a masterful world against the backdrop of an almost ‘tempest’ like atmosphere. It is populated by Calibans, created to serve a purpose and, have had their god-given lives taken from them.

Personally, I feel like this is not only HG Wells’ best novel but one of the best examples of Sci-Fi/Horror from the 19th century since the works of Stevenson and Shelley. I do not think it is fair to dismiss this book under the works of pure Sci-Fi that Wells initially wrote. It seems like we are missing a big point about the 19th century and that point is that everyone was frightened by possibility, no matter how far out it was. Now that Darwin’s theory was out in the public eye, anything seemed possible. Be that as it may, HG Wells’ novel was written some decades after Darwin’s theory was published. But, as soon as it started to gain steam, the reading public were welcomed with a whole new sector of evolutionary-based horror. Books such as ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ and ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ focus on the act of degeneration and physiognomy albeit in different ways. But, Wells’ novel does something different. These beasts are not degenerates, they are perfectly normal in the act of searching for freedom. However, because they appear as they do, the reading public is proven to be terrible human beings in thinking that they do not deserve it. HG Wells creates sympathy for the ‘other’ instead of terror. It is truly extraordinary.

Conclusion

So there we have it, an extraordinary book analysed under a sort-of microscope as to why it is so revered. Honestly, this is a book I revere but everyone else seems to hold over HG Wells like a dead goose. It is almost a bottom-of-the-list feature in most of the lists by critics about his novels. Highly underrated but an absolute masterpiece, it proves to be one of the greatest novels ever written because it could terrify the public with possibility.

Next Week: The Pearl by John Steinbeck