Beasts

H. G. Wells on Man

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells

Shipwreck is a common enough occurrence and a common enough fear. To be cast adrift with a few survivors, of course, is always possible. It’s always possible when we take to the seas.

And when, after a few days of no food and nothing to drink, the mind turns towards the cannibal, who can be surprised? That is what happened to Edward Prendick – him and two others, late of the Lady Vain – and as they three were drawing straws to see who would be devoured, the strong one (who had lost the ballot) and the weaker one (who wanted to enforce the law) both grappled together and, together, toppled into the sea.

Prendick says that he laughed, completely involuntarily, upon seeing them go into the water to die. I believe him. These things happen.

What happened to Prendick, as all know, was his later, eventual picking up by another boat with a fierce, drunk captain and a bizarre crew – and a man named Montgomery with some medical training who saved Prendick’s life.

Montgomery and Prendick are thereafter put ashore at a strange distant island, and Montgomery tells Prendick that he must meet the island’s ruler. Montgomery himself was a student in London, once upon a time. A doctor in training, a scientist? But then a disgrace, of which we never hear in full, took Montgomery from polite circulation. He was exiled to this island with the famous vivisectionist, Dr Moreau. Together, they bring animals of numerous types to their new dwelling, and in what he calls the House of Pain, the doctor experiments as he will upon them.

What is his goal? The making of man from beast. The breaking down of phenotypical barriers with the scalpel. Does the doctor ever convince Prendick, let alone the reader, of his activities? Does the doctor ever even convince his confederate, Montgomery? Who of us is to say.

Prendick is disturbed. He hears of the surgery. He sees the animals in their new, deranged, sick forms. Some of them are cruel parodies of mankind, bizarre travesties of nature. Moreau cannot let well enough alone. He does not want only to turn particular animals into men; he wishes to combine them, to make grotesque hybrids of individual organisms. When they are operated upon, they scream in agony. It takes much time for Prendick to grow used to their terrible cries.

The unwanted guest, Prendick himself, is not too welcome. The doctor and his confederate have a good little system going and they are wary of outsiders. Moreau has speeches prepared, papers he would read out at conferences, were he invited to any. He is in exile – was thrown out of his homeland because the newspapers did not like his work. They thought he was mad – mad! Is such a man, capable of so much, justly called mad? Prendick is, despite himself, made part of the doctor’s scheme.

Prendick knows he cannot go anywhere; the next boat is a year away, if one ever arrives. It may well not come at all. Prendick has gone, at first in fear of the men, among the animals. He has seen their terrible rituals: they chant mantras about fervently being the men they resemble. They are not permitted to eat flesh; they may not drink blood. If animals do either, the whips and the revolvers that the doctor and Montgomery flourish will be used upon them.

The law of man will be savagely applied in the place called the House of Pain.

Moreau believes himself a creator, of a kind. He defies convention; he plays with dark forces. He is indifferent to the pain of others. His physical strength – his certainty – these are great powers in the hands of any man. The animals chant his Law among themselves. They believe Moreau is beyond them; a lifeform not like they. He cannot die, as they can die. He is insensible to pain, the terrible pain that rules their lives. They do as he asks or they face his dreadful and sure vengeance.

And yet among them, rebellion swells and breaks the surface of what were smooth waters. A little violence here; intransigence there. Some animals hunt their fellows; they fall upon the mammal specimens. They tear rodent heads off and gnaw their spinal columns to get at the fluids within.

Moreau wades into their struggles and their squabbling. By now, Prendick is an accomplice; he too, like Montgomery and the doctor, has revolver and whip – three men ranged against these vast horrors, against the whole island, with only the slavish animals, the ones bred to be servants and lickspittles, prepared to stand unequivocally at their sides.

What will happen when the animals learn that their leader, the great doctor who made them, can be knocked, can bleed, may die like all others? Can Prendick survive?

‘The sea was silent, the sky was silent,’ he later writes. ‘I was alone with the night and silence.’