I have recently read H. G. Wells' The Island Of Doctor Moreau. I had heard of the 1896 classic years ago and thought I might read it if I got the chance. Then I saw it on the shelf mere days ago and just had to get it.
I went in with high expectations. A science fiction classic touching the boundaries between human and animal and exploring the psychological effects of the events it describes. An experimental robinsonade showing what happens when scientists go too far. To some degree I got what I expected. There's horror, excitement, a certain melancholy, lonesomeness and a hint of insanity. But I couldn't help but notice something else, that was inked on these pages with just as much certainty.
To start it off, our main character Prendrick is a very passive man. He does not interfere with Moreau's experiments at all. Even when he decides to kill himself he doesn't actually do it. Only after Moreau and
Montgomery die is when he starts to interfere with life on the island more. He lives with the creatures, kills some of them that misbehave, befriends others, but he is convinced they are lesser than him. No matter how well they speak and how well they act like people, they
aren't people to him and eventually they revert back to their bestial nature. Even when he meets one of them for the first time there is a notion that he simultaneously sees them as people and refuses to do so.
He meets M'Ling, Montgomery's assistant, identifies him as such, yet refers to him as an it. He is convinced that his deformities make him inhuman. It made me wonder: just how much deviation from the norm would Prendrick tolerate for someone or something to still be human?
And then there's Moreau, about whom I have one specific question. What is his goal? He transforms animals into humans or humanoids but he doesn't do anything with them. He lets them live on his island but he doesn't give them any goals. He says he's trying to make the perfect creation. Of course he's playing god. But there's more to it. He governs his creatures. He teaches them language. It's like Moreau saw a group of creatures happily and peacefully living their lives and decided he wanted to command them. To make them act like himself. He decided to colonise them.
Montgomery has "too much sympathy" with them. He tries to give "the brutes" alcohol, which ends up killing him as they cannot handle it and start a brawl. As their governor and oppressor disappears the creatures revert back to their animilistic traits and become "uncivilised". At one point, earlier on, Prendrick makes a point about the "ugliness" seeming to be an inherent trait of the "Islanders".
Prendrick, Montgomery and Moreau are the only fully human inhabitants of the island, coincidentally all British. They refer to previous slaves that have lived on the island as "Kanakas" only, never as people. It might have become apparent but I cannot help and read this novel as an illustration of the dehumanisation of the victims of British colonialism.
Now, after reading this you might think I didn't like this book or that I think it should be banned or H. G. Wells should be cancelled. And I have to deny that, that is far from what I'm trying to say. I don't know and actually doubt that this was what Wells wanted the novel to
encompass. Rather I think it's just a fragment of the past.
Sometimes we learn about historic atrocities and we wonder how anyone could ever be so cruel. And it's easy, the victim quite simply wasn't seen as human unlike the perpetrator, they weren't treated or viewed as their equal. Maybe this book will make one stop in their tracks, look around them and wonder if they have been guilty of this. Do they perceive other people as inhuman? Where does it start, at a simple disability? And maybe, just maybe one might also realise that humans are animals, and the animals around them might just be a little more human than they previously thought.
Maybe the lesson we can attribute to this book is that we should not try to change others into what they may or may not be, just to feel superior ourselves. And maybe we should have empathy, even for those of us that
are so different from ourselves that we find it hard to relate to them at all.
Laura Wagner is a student of European Literatures and Media in a Global Context at the University of Saarland.
Laura contributed this Blog Entry while completing an Internship at Quay Books, Limerick
Leave a comment