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WEEK II of The Island of Doctor Moreau : Synopsis

Characters of Moreau, Montgomery and Prendick

SF as … Social Commentary, As Political Writing… as a Literature of Ideas

Literary Allusions in Moreau

The Changing Generic Kaleidoscope of Moreau

The Law, The Morality of Moreau’s Science and Moreau’s Mixed Messages

“Humanity” Defined

How is Moreau SF?

Critic Dark Suvin on the Ambiguity Typifying Wells’ SF

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Characters of Moreau, Montgomery, Prendick

Moreau…

· A tall, old, white-haired man, routinely compared to representations of an Old Testament God: see William Blake's paintings "The Ancient of Days" or "God Judging Adam" for eg.

· A socially isolated loner whose “over-reaching” (in pushing himself and the limits of knowledge and social propriety) recalls ALL THE GOTHIC VILLAINS FROM The Castle of Otranto through

Frankenstein and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

· A STUDENT OF EVOLUTION WHO MISUNDERTANDS EVOLUTION (AND A FAILED SCIENTIST WHO PERSONALLY—AND IN HIS OWN SCIENCE—HAS ‘FOSSILZED’, STAGNATED… AND STOPPD ADAPTING…)

· Moreau is the novel’s spokesperson for (unchecked) free will —but of course one of his scientifically and morally uninhibited experiments is his downfall—the puma—and ends his life

· Like Griffin in Wells’ later “scientific romance” The Invisible Man, Moreau is defined almost entirely through his science—And like Griffin he finds his science dominates him until the science goes wrong and he… dies in pursuing it…

· In The Invisible Man the community, ravaged by Griffin’s rampaging, turns on him—here, in his perfect isolation on Noble’s Island, Moreau works undisturbed

Moreau gives his name to the book—but like Griffin he’s the antagonist (certainly not its hero) – and then too even HGW’s title is ambiguous:

***For shouldn’t the book be called “The Science of the Island of Dr. Moreau”? – since it IS a book about evolution—and evolution is the real winner in this story without a hero… ***

· Note HGW’s ambivalence about scientific progress: Science is NOT the hero of this story—or a scientist, for that matter.

There is no “Good” science to redeem the “Bad Science” done by Moreau.

Indeed, the only ‘winner’ in this survivalist science fiction story is… EVOLUTION—Look at all those rabbits, moths and those few hogs left on the island, still adapting, after Moreau’s evolutionary carnage ends…

Always remember that HGW’s fiction probes at the possible eventual

extinction of our species… and wonders if that is a ‘bad thing’…

Montgomery…

· A compromised man : riddled with guilt, morally complicit in Moreau’s scientific pursuits, using liquor to blur his pain and his memory

· Like Moreau, a man marked by his past (which he has fled, along with all ties to civilization)

· Trapped in a nightmarish present—haunted by his past—with no hope for the future, Montgomery’s decision to ‘burn his boats’ in one final wild drunken party(with his beast chum M’Ling) is surely not totally unexpected:

For Montgomery, like Prendick, is “going nowhere” fast—BUT UNLIKE PRENDICK, MONTGOMERY REFUSES TO ADAPT

Prendick, using “Devolution”-type jargon, says that Montgomery “reverted very quickly” and adds that ‘he was always half-beast’ regardless

BUT… Montgomery’s is no mere alcoholic wastrel…

Montgomery is THE NOVEL’S SPOKESPERSON FOR “CHANCE”—

(yet typical of HGW’s novel’s mixed messages, Montgomery (wilfully) saves Prendick’s life, but dismisses the action as mere “chance”—as he does everything else important in his life(from ‘losing his head’ with a dance hall girl to getting M’Ling drunk)

And Montgomery, in one of his last lucid remarks, Puts his finger on THE crucial problem facing Moreau’s survivors: ***What is to be done with the Beasts?(Are these half-humans to be treated ‘humanely’—and what = “humane” on Moreau’s island?)

Montgomery—rightly—accuses Prendick of hypocritically Wanting to kill all the beasts—as being the ‘humane’ thing to do

Here (as with Prendick throughout the novel)

sounding the right moral note is easy (for Montgomery): it is ACTING on those moral principles that is difficult… esp. in a ‘Moreau world’ in which the usual moral constraints have beenunshackled—like the puma…

*** Because of the island’s political instability (with all power vested in the personal cult of Moreau)***When Montgomery 'reverts,' he pulls Prendick down with him, Nearly destroying all life on the island with one last great 'Ram in The Rye Wahooo Covid-19 Party'

Here, in its insights into leadership (what it is, who obeys it) and what power is (and who maintains it—and how),

HGW’s novel anticipates the political content of The Dispossessed. Here too HGW’s novel proves to us once again that

***SF is so oftenA Literature of Ideas… often satiric… full of social commentarywith a narrative interest in Social Groupings, Taboos, Religion, Leaders, Social Engineering and Control

Edward Prendick…

-A.K.A. “The man who was going nowhere”And a man who presents himself as the book’s spokesperson for Fate

(Although ironically it turns out Prendick IS going somewhere: For he finally takes direction of his life, asserts his will,Stops being the pawn in someone else’s chess game, And leaves the island… arriving home at last…to carry on adapting…

Where EP sets about trying to create a meaningful life for himself...While trying to observe some pattern in life that directs it—A search for which he has unquenchable “hope” in the novel’s last paragraph

Prendick’s Morality?(Once again, part of the novel’s mixed messages)Yes, Prendick is a man of moral rectitude:

Twice we are told he is an “abstainer” (in a novel full of drunks)

And a man who makes ALL the novel’s moral objections to Moreau conceringhis “vile” and ‘purposeless’ cruel science—

At his moral best (end of Chapter 16) Prendick most effectively condemns Moreau’s pain-centred science for all the pain he unleashes on his island world

But (typical of the novel’s habit of cancelling out all its proposed lines of thematic approach—As Free Will and Chance and Fate are introduced and repudiated)

Prendick, the ‘animal rights lover’, is rebuked by Montgomery for being a moral hypocrite,

And Montgomery is proved right—it seems—when Prendick tells the Dog-Man that in due course he will “slay” all Moreau’s creatures…

Indeed, the novel reminds us through Prendick’s moral remarks how easy it is on Noble’s Island to “talk” a good game morally: Since Moreau and Prendick have almost entirely abandoned their moral scruples, itfalls to Prendick by default to become the novel’s voice of morality…

Still, for all that, this novel HAS to have someone to speak for morality(and thus speak for us—we readers)

b/c Moreau has so thoroughly “estranged” readers from all that is familiar and reassuring in the ‘civilized’ human world—

so that the “Everyman” figure—Prendick—becomes our intermediary b/n the science fictional world of Moreau and the civilized London world we know…,

*** The problem of Prendick’s intermittent moralism —and his moral authority—is made much worse by the problem of WHY Prendick tells his story—we never learn why—***

If we knew he wrote the story to condemn vivisection,To castigate science unchecked by moral considerations,To prove –as therapy—how he endured life in a science-made madhouse,

We’d be on much firmer ground evaluating the novel and Prendick’s moral

conduct (and lapses from it)

but here again Wells choses ambiguity ahead of clarity of statement…

That same lack of clarity re: morality extends (courtesy of Moreau’s experiments and Prendick’s pronouncements) to the book’s definition of “humanity”

Notice too it is Prendick—not Wells—who repeatedly defines humanity in terms of normative appearance—with deviations from it judged ‘unhuman,’

And it is Prendick who equates humanity with SPEECH (and who condemns the Beasts in their huts as being “cripples and maniacs”).

***So important to the story throughout its chronicle of life on the island, Prendick is most important to the book at the last for returning to London:

For here we see Prendick contining to adaptto his circumstances—to HISnatural environment—far away from Noble's Island and Moreau's meddling with everyone's evolution...

For Prendick we see accordingly

*** How Moreau ends by supporting evolution (meaning Darwininan Natural Selection)

which is not moral and neither ‘right nor wrong’--

But the “natural” state of things on earth—for all species—

and a process that cannot be ‘speeded up’

by producing animal hybrids –

as in this book all such attempts to do so end—futilely—in extinction-- for all concerned

Literary allusions in Morea u

p. 52: Comus (a 1634 court Masque by John Milton)

p.32: Bluebeard’s Character (Charles Perrault’s 1697 Fairy Tale)

p. 72: Victor Hugo’s 1869 novella L’Homme Qui Rit

· All thoroughly eccentric, ‘non-curriculum’ texts

· All texts concerned with outrages to nature—and children and women—involving people ‘living beyond the pale’ involved in dark, criminal acts

· Each text is filled with violence, cruelty and in the case of Milton’s Comus wild, drunken, self-indulgent, frenzied, hysterical behaviour

In Comus a virtuous lady, lost in the woods, is abducted and enchanted by the drunken God Revelry, Comus, who ties her to a chair and attempts to intoxicate her and seduce her. Keeping her wits about her, she reasons with her tempter—who is eventually chased away by her brothers and an Attendant Spirit, before being reunited with her parents in a triumphal celebration.

In “Bluebeard”, the story of a serial killing misogynist, the latest of B’s seven wives can’t control her curiosity and blunders into his secret chamber tofind the heads of his previous six wives. Just before she’s beheaded, her brothers arrive and decapitate Bluebeard.

In L’Homme Qui Rit, set in 17th C England, a homeless child, Gwnplaine--whose mouth has been surgically altered into a perpetual smile bya group of cruel Capriccios--rescues an infant girl (Dea) found in a snowstorm. Gwnplaine and Dea are in turn rescued by a carnival vendor—Ursus. Dea, now blind, falls in love with Gwnplaine, who adores her, and all is well, even though Gwnplaine is forced to perform as a circus ‘freak’ to earn a living. When the debauched Duchess Josiana sees him perform, she attempts to seduce him—but a twist of fate ensures she has to marry him and make him a Lord. Gwnplaine then rejects his peerage, goes forth to find Dea and Ursus, discovers them only to see Dea die, and so throws drowns himself, leving Ursus alone in the world once again.

Q: What do these texts—these ‘three weird sisters’ --suggest cumulatively?

A: In terms of the novel's action, they all point toward

Montgomery’s “Bank Holiday” (with its drunkenness and burning of the boats—touching off a Dionysiac frenzy).

A: They are also the ‘kind’ of activity one associates with Moreau's science: activities being carried out away from prying eyes, outside social norms, with people giving in to instinct and letting their desires—and cruelty—run riot.

A: They all suggest some kind of secretive and dangerously ‘out of control’ behaviour: far beyond what ‘polite’ society would term “acceptable.”

A: They all anticipate the eventual breakdown of political order: reminding us onceagain of how HGW’s novel IS social commentary… and partly prophetic…

The Generic Kaleidoscope of Moreau

Note the Changing Generic Focus of the Book:

· Wells' SF novel begins as an Adventure Story (gone wrong)—centred bysome kind of mystery, tinged by Gothicism

· Chapter 14 introduces the novel’s scientific content, its arguments fordispassionate science, Moreau’s dismissal of ethics

· Chapters 15 to the End… as Prendick and Montgomery (and the Beast-Folk)struggle to live with Moreau’s science … see the book become

An exploration of principles of social order—Moreau as a political novel—

And a consideration of the force required to maintain power in humansociety…

· Then the book becomes social criticism—with definitions of humanity andthe supposed humanity of 19th C European civilization (via the novel'scomments about how quick university-educated Middle-Class CaucasianEnglishmen are to judge and dominate others without the same educationaland cultural backgrounds (and supposed advantages)

· And finally the book proves to be something of a religious memoir: thestory of one man’s search for meaning in an increasingly aleatory modernworld…

In all of this material,

as the critic Adam Roberts notes of this book and SF generally,

**we see SF as a body of writing concerned with exploring ideas—

It is speculative, prophetic, and thought-provoking fiction

In the questions about the intrusion of science in our modern lives

It offers no consoling, easy answers… and no convincingly affirmativeending…

The LAW… and Moreau’s Mixed Messages

See Chapter 12: "The Sayers of the Law" (pages 59-61) for The Saying of the Lawwhich most critics zero in on as proof of the novel’s “youthful blasphemy”

The key problem academic critics and some readers havewith the Saying of the Law

isn’t so much the portrait of these chanting animals

but the assumption that this scene reduces meaningful wordsto meaninglessness...

through speakers who have learned sounds and elementary grammar and (to a degree) acted on those principles...

Then too some critics and readers have seen in this episode

satiric commentary on aspects of the Christian litany...(particularly the prayers and responses in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer).

Critics and readers in a rush to condemn the book for its apparent "blasphemy" can find-- it seems-- further support from Wells himself, who described the novel in a letter to a friend as a piece of "youthful blasphemy"...

***But be careful here in summing up this episode-- and other instances of theLaw's rehearsal-- as simply blasphemy. (Don't blindly follow critics and readers in THEIR "Big Thinks").

***For one thing, the Law is NOT Moreau's creation but that of a Christian

Missionary "boy"--

who taught the Law to Moreau's animal victims to ...

1. Give them a sense of dignity ("Are we not men?" they ask) in their newfound lives and status as men,

2. Give them rules to live by-- a code of behaviour to aspire to and follow,

3. Provide them with shared personal-- hence "social"-- values, thus uniting them through the Law's principles AND through those community gatherings in which they recite the Law... and consider the fate of those who deviate from it...

4. Provide the Beast Folk with a resource for practicing their language skills: skills whose deterioration is, according to Prendick, the first sign of the creatures' 'reversion' (A.K.A. "evolution"),

5. Instill in the Beast Folk a measure of respect for Moreau, who is represented in their chanting as their creator, source of punishment and healer in The House of Pain, and

6. Provide the Beast Folk AND Moreau and Montgomery with a measure of personal security: reminding the Beast Folk of the advantages to all in obeyingthe Kanaka's Law and providing Moreau and Montgomery with a phrase ("Say the Law") that reasserts their authority over the Beast Folk and, as such, works as a kind of "charm" to hold the Beast Folk's animal instincts at bay....

"The Law" -- which readers see violated by the Leopard-Man (and, so, see fraying like a load-bearing cable on the island's social safety net)-- also reminds readers how very precarious Moreau's and Montgomery's --and Prendick's-- situation is at all times...

***"The Law," which functions as a social deterrent of instinct, is seen to have a political, religious AND judicial dimension:

thus, The Law helps this society organize itself, remain faithful to shared community beliefs, AND is justification for singling out and punishing

(in The House of Pain) all who break The Law.

***AND The Law is-- as we know extra-textually -- a constant reminder of HG Wells' belief that " humanity is animal rough-hewn to a reasonable shape": a reminder that all humans & animals are trapped between injunction (The Law with its "Do Nots") and instinct (the powerful drive for survival --and the gratification of needs-- common to all life forms).

So, to simply dismiss The Law as "blasphemy" is to gravely misunderstand and misrepresent its many functions in the novel.

If one wants to go on a 'Blasphemy Hunt' in Moreau, I'd say 'Forget about Chapter 12'-- which, if nothing else, sees the Beast Folk gather socially to repeat ideas crucial to their being and their survival-- and look instead at Chapter18: "The Finding of Moreau" and page 101.

Here, Prendick (so quick to judge Moreau and Montgomery while --in Chapter 16 at least-- defending the Beast Folk

makes a startling political--and evolutionary-- move by invoking religion--in particular Christ's Resurrection--

to safeguard himself and Montgomery through re-establishing the BeastFolk's fear of Moreau, asserting that Moreau is not in fact spiritually dead (101).

Prendick does not advance this idea casually;

the Ape Man (offering further proof of Moreau's mixed success with his creations) sounds just as wise and Free-Thinking as the Hyena-Swine for asking-- quite reasonably--

If Moreau is dead then "Is there a Law now?" (101).

That is a VERY troubling question--

one the Ape Man springs on a totally unsuspecting Montgomery and Prendick,

facing them with a serious political dilemma--

for if there is no Moreau and no Law, then...

WHAT is holding this fragile society together?

Isn't (to quote W.B. Yeats) "mere anarchy" about to be "loosed upon the world" if there is no operative order left in the universe of Noble's Island?

Prendick's answer is a desperate lunge at belief:

a spur of the moment invocation of Christianity to shore up the island's FAST-collapsing belief structure.

Fortunately an alcohol-sodden Montgomery backs Prendick up ...

(and it is as well he does since no one on the island --not even Prendick-- has muchbelief in Prendick or respect for "The Man with the Bound Arm" and the Man who ran crying into the sea) ...

and the majority of the Beast Folk go along with Prendick's claim regarding Moreau's immortality,

but some real damage has been done to people's collective belief ...

and Prendick is not, thereafter, totally respected...

Q: So what are we to make of this episode, esp. re: the novel's supposedblasphemy?

A: The immediate answer is that Christ himself would not be surprised by Prendick's tactics: Matthew 24:5 reminds us that "many shall come in my name" and seek to deceive others accordingly.

A further point here is that Wells is, I think, not so much concerned withblasphemy or being irreligious as underscoring how religion-- or any body of ideas-- can be twisted by people for their own ends: usually political ends linked to gaining or preserving power,

So this episode is further proof of Moreau's status as social commentary through its insight into how religion-- for all its personal and social good-- may become a mechanism of social control.

Finally, this episode sees Prendick beginning to evolve --and very quickly at that-- for the first time on Noble's Island,

being obliged to do so as the island's political order is collapsing at an alarming rate,

bringing with it grave threats to his continued existence.

Not only is Prendick now superseding Montgomery as the quickest and mosteffective thinker on the island,

he is also taking the first crucial steps in securing his safety-- buying time tillhe can escape Noble's Island.

So, the invocation of Christian belief in these episodes (in Chapters 12 and 18) is not the work of a bad boy writing rude words on the church wall,

as these episodes don't make religion 'look bad':

rather they make Prendick and Moreau look bad.

Thus, Prendick appears in Chapter 18 like a politician desperate to win an election by kissing babies --

or suddenly going to church for the first time in his life--

BUT not everyone is 'buying' his sudden profession of Faith.

Likewise, with regard to Dr. Moreau.

despite all his talk of "man-making"

and his readiness to portray himself as "a religious man",

Moreau dismisses the Kanaka's Law as nonsense--

Chapter 14 sees him say "I fancy they follow the lines the Kanaka missionary marked out, and have a kind of mockery of a rational life-- poor beasts! There's something they call the Law. Sing hymns about 'all thine'.... But I can see through it all" (78-79).

YET when it pleases Moreau to do so,

he visits The Huts and demands that the Beast Folk "Say the words" of this NONSENSICAL Law (90, Chapter 16).

Again, Wells' point here is not to mock religion; rather to show how easily two otherwise uninterested believers summon faith when needed to protect themselves by controlling others.

So, Moreau himself is being ridiculed here:

If he he is viewed as the Father of Creation by his ‘creatures’

the Beast Folks' recitation of the Lawonly reminds us of their fear of Moreau and the House of Pain.

Likewise, if Moreau is meant to be seen as a would-beOld Testament deity, Moreau doesn't make a very convincing job of it:

for he has no interest in his creatures' happiness;rather he is far more concerned with HIS security(allowing him to go on with more experiments), using brute force-- including vivisection and burning--to ensure regular obedience, offering them no hope of any futureexcept a return trip to the House of Pain.

Finally, lest anyone have a too-serious, and single-minded view of Wells' Doctor Moreau, consider the doctor's name,

which once again raises questions about this SF novel's mixed messages.

While critics have suggested all sorts of reasons for Wells' naming of the doctor-- Adam Roberts cleverly (but unconvincingly) argues that the name invokes the French noun "Lamoreaux" and links that (supposed) fact to Moreau's putative plans to make a mate from the puma (!)-- see H. G. Wells: A Literary Life. London:Palgrave Macmillan, 57)--

I'd suggest the doctor's name owes something to

JACQUES-JOSEPH MOREAU, the French neurologist, who in 1859--same year as Darwin's On the Origin of Species-- published Morbid Psychology

a text arguing that over-excitation of the intellect could cause brain malfunction and result in the atrophy of 'the moral sensibility.'

Excessive cerebral energy, it is claimed, can thereby lead to immorality and criminality.

So?

If his fictional doctor's name directs us back to Jacques-Joseph Moreau, thenWells appears to be offering readers two ways of reading that name in his novel:

As I read the novel, Wells is suggesting that Doctor Moreau's obsession withexploring "the extreme limit of plasticity in a living shape" (17, Chapter 14) has blinded him to his subjects' pain, all but obliterated any sense of compassion, and led to his destruction.

So, HGW's book is about Evolution-- AND Obssesion-- as much as it is about the dangers of unchecked science.

Of course, as we saw in discussing Lombroso and Nordau, similar ideas about genius, criminality and (above all) degeneration flourish from the 1850s-1890s in Europe...

Again, that name "Moreau" can be read in at least two ways: as

a) Wells literally adapting what Jacques-Joseph Moreau argued in Morbid Psychology and explaining what went wrong with Doctor Moreau, as his obsessionled him to his vivisector's cruelty;

OR b) the name can be read SATIRICALLY, as Wells' comment on yet another misguided scientist (or social critic-- like Lombroso or Nordau) who hit ona 'crazy' theory and devoted his life to demonstrating what a fool anyone would be to credit it...

So, *** once again HGW's novel is food for thought, part of SF as a

literature of ideas, and a SF novel that repeatedly exhibits ambiguity and ambivalence, via questions such as

***What kind of scientist is Moreau? ***What is he trying to achieve?***How could his vivisection experiements be justified?*** What is "human"? and What is HGW signifying in naming his novel as he does?

Chapter 14—the Morality of Moreau’s science

Q: What is HGW’s attitude towards science in Moreau?

Ironically, in an author so often praised as a popularizer of science, HGW is uneasy about scientific progress and warns us against science run amok—what happens, his book asks us, when Science ‘falls into the wrong hands'?

Wells is far more interested than Verne in the human dilemmas posed by Science...

Moreau, the over-reacher, the Gothic Villain, has gone too farand produced a science that is an end in itself;

Dr. Moreau is thus a fine (bad) example of the dangers Wells fears in untrammelled scientific research.

Chapter 14, “Doctor Moreau explains,” and its pages

72-74 offer us the clearest conflict b/n morality and scienceAs this science fiction novel (this novel of ideas) challenges us to think...

it’s here Wells asks us if indeed pain is an inescapable and even necessary feature of human life,

if (p. 73) “pain underlies your propositions about sin”—

i.e. our laws and thoughts about sin are based upon the pain sin causes us, & those in authority over us, and causes society at large

and, Doctor Moreau asserts) our inability to get past our obsession with pain ensures then that we will always remain animals....

Does Moreau, indeed, rely on his arguments as justification to operate on his

patients? (Does he need justification on his island?)

According to Prendick—twice—there is no justification offered by Moreau for what he does...

and for that reason Moreau’s science lacks necessary, fundamental moral authority

and so can be quickly rejected as theory & science...

see Chapter 14 p. 76: the pain of becoming human

and see Chapter 15 p. 81: how the beasts, like humans, are torn b/n instinct and injunction (the Law) and always revert to their baser instincts—

not a very optimistic comment about humanity!

***the core of the critical objections to Moreau (as human being and as scientist) are found in his callous comment to Prendick --Chapter 14-- p. 75:

***“The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless as Nature”

that cold, cruel comment (which is the nearest Moreau comes to justifying his scientific experiments)

raises two pts. at once:

· Pt. 1. it debases and dehumanizes Moreau... and science

for it justifies Moreau’s cruelty (in his eyes at least)

and it suggests that science need be no more human... and no moral... (or socially, politically, religiously responsible)than the objects it inspects and the data it tabulates...

and

Pt. 2 it raises the alarming question of whether Moreau has understood nature correctly—especially after twenty years (of experiments) spent studying it—

in other words, has he (like Prendick’s fear of vivisectionists) leapt to the wrongconclusion about nature and devoted his life to proving himself wrong!

***One of the least examined horrors in Moreau’s catalogue of them is that Dr. M creates creatures

for no reason other than to create them...

Apart from the Kanaka boy's rudimentary education of the Beast Folk in TheLaw, these creatures are given no further education after learning to speak, no remedial teaching (except punishment to keep them in their place).

no encouragement of any kind to find a purpose or happiness on the island (as fishermen, as farmers, as hunter-gatherers, as parents).

Once M’s created his creatures, he casts them off (like Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein does his creature).

Moreau could do something to further his creations' linguistic skills, education and understanding—

He could bring a Linguist, an English Teacher, a Speech Therapist to the island—or teach them himself.

Doing so would make the creatures respect him(and thus safeguard him)and would add another dimension to his research(and his eradication of the creatures’ bestiality);

instead, the creatures are left with a debased language and understanding

rather like Shakespeare’s ‘Monster’Caliban in The Tempest, who tells his master, Prospero,

“You taught me language and my profit on’tIs, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you

For learning me your language!” (Act 1, ii 363-365)

If one goes looking for happiness on Moreau’s island one doesn’t find much—most of it resides in the past

(before the island's science took over):

-- Montgomery’s Dance Hall days... and friends-- Prendick’s ‘joy’ on surviving the shipwreck and successive disasters...

but even that happiness is fleeting...

***Moreau’s Beast Folk have no happiness, no purpose,And the Beast People have nowhere to go (on the island – or

developmentally)

Again and again we realize that Moreau’s evolutionary science — so cruel in its methods—

is an evolutionary dead-end:

At least in The Book of Genesis, with help from Eve and the Serpent,God's creatures develop knowledge,

which, if it ends their tenure in Paradise, provides themwith the Free Will and insight needed to function in a Fallen World...

Moreau’s Ends-Directed Science is altogether too successful:it results in the predictable extinction of the future lives of his creatures

Degeneration & Mixed Messages in HGW’s Fiction

If the book appears blasphemous—and objectionable-- to some readers***Moreau is in fact VERY mixed in its messages re: science

(and Fate, Chance and principles of Order in the Cosmos)

Thus, Moreau fails:he never eradicates the beast from the Beast Folk (and everyone knows of his failure: Moreau admits it in Chapter 14 p. 78Prendick recalls this fact in Chapter 20 --on p. 116

and the Beast Folk themselves (p.60--Chapter 12) know that the Beasts 'revert'... and have firsthand proof of it...

Perhaps more surprising is the ‘Degeneration’ of Montgomery and Prendick himself:

See Chapter 19--107 and 109-- for Prendick’s comments on Montgomery:(“You’ve made a beast of yourself; to the beasts you may go...“I felt that... [Montgomery] was in truth half akin to these Beast Folk, unfitted for human kindred”

Prendick, briefly, lords it over the Beast Folk and replaces Moreau but –

not everyone heeds him (see Chapter 20--page 114-115 Hyena Swine’s rebuke to EP)

and P begins to ‘revert’ himself

thus, Chapter 20, page 117, he’s like the child who’s run away from home only to return, ‘tail b/n his legs’—telling them “I want food” ***

(surely Prendick at his lowest ebb on the island)

Chapter 21: page 124-125: his personal appearance ‘degenerates’ and once again he longs for death (moping by the sea)

This material all recalls (and endorses) HGW’s claim in “Zoological Retrogression” that

humanity (or any other species) can rapidly advance, then regress –and perhaps be eventually rendered extinct

These episodes also drive home the point that in Moreau

just as Humanity itself does not dominateand unfailingly control its environment,

***so tooscience (in Moreau ) does NOT dominate in its application to nature: it is not all powerful, it has no lasting ‘cure-alls’ ***

as proof we can point to the fact Moreau’s scientific experiments—--many of them failed—

produce decidedly uneven results:

even his greatest success (M’Ling) is not wholly accepted (and thus comfortable)

in the World of Humankind...

& by the tale’s end, all the Beast Folk have died off Noble’s island,

leaving nothing but a few moths, hogs, rabbits and some odd rats(nice that some of M’s rabbits survived the post-evolutionary carnage!)

thus, for Moreau’s Beast Folk, the result of his evolutionary experimentsis extinction:more dead species to add to the list ofevolution’s non-survivors and killed off species (the dodo, auk, mastodon...)

Just as Moreau gives out mixed messages re: evolutionSo, tampering with evolution and trying to make it an ‘exact’ scienceproves an entirely fruitless, pointless exercisein time, effort and pain...

Does HGW’s novel suggest then—that since human agency (and free will) is thwarted (re: Moreau at least) on Noble’s Island

that human life is in fact governed by other factors—such as Chance or Fate?

It is Montgomery who makes the novel’s best case for the operation of

Chance in the novel—and it is Prendick who argues the case for Fate

However, Montgomery (despite what he says Chapter 4: page 20 re: chance) is the author of his own misfortune:

his reckless and foolish actions—all quite deliberate (if often drunken)result in disaster: his death, M’Ling’s deathand the destruction of the boat that could have saved Montgomery and Prendick...

as the novel's spokesperson for ‘blind luck’ ends by demonstrating the very real dangers of a Free Will unchecked by law or reason(thus, logically, Montgomery dies like Moreau... wilfully,

in purposelessness and pain)

It is left to Prendick to make the case for Fate (see Chapter 16's last para, p. 96)—

Typical, however, of HGW’s novel and the mixed messages in his fiction generally,

***Prendick is the worst person to speak on behalf of Fate:insofar as his survival depends on the wilful actions of his fellow men--

such as

the two sailors who bungled their attempt at murder AND cannibalismand Montgomery, who administered medical care and revived him on the ship, and Moreau who spared EP's life on the boat

*** So it seems that no one force –fate, chance or Free Will—is any sense triumphant in the book...

***Q: How does Wells' SF novel end?A: By speaking of (human) hope—

“There it must be... in the vast and eternal laws of matter... that whatever ismore than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope or I could

not live. And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends” (131, Chapter 22, lastpara).

These reflections on HOPE are VERY importantre: Prendick’s characterre: the novel’s final emotional impact on its readers.

Without those statements on hopewe’re left with a novel in which mere survival is an achievement—and (apparently) the end goal of human life...

Again, it’s a feature of HGW’s scientific romances (of the 1890s)that he is by no means certain of what the future holds for human

evolution:

See for example the Time Traveller’s comments in The Time Machine (1895), written a year before Moreau. On arriving in the 802,701, in humanity’s future, the Time Traveller wonders what people will be like:

“I looked up at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear... what might not have happened to man? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness – a foul creature to be incontinently slain” (p. 33—Chapter III, The Time Machine)

Note the equation of humanity with “manliness”and the Turn of the Century European anxiety

about evolution and degenerationand the millenialist doubt that ‘we might be at the crossroads, verging on

the dawn of a great discovery—or the universal darkness that ends the human race!’

How is Moreau SF?

Once the book –in Chapter 14—examines the practical and moral consequences (for human life) of the Dr’s science

(showing us how modern science affects the human condition)

The book becomes recognizably SF.

It now sets in motion a series of questions that demand we think about the role of science in this ‘science fictional’ world —and ours:

and think about those issues in practical, moral and, yes, plausibly scientific terms:

Thus, typical of SF, Moreau asks, “If some surgeon created human hybrids and turned them loose in society, what is the humane way to treat them, live with them and—if necessary—kill them?”

(just as Montgomery asks Prendick-- Chapter 19, page 107)

Typically, then, SF is very, very good at encouraging further speculationas it goes on asking questions –about science and humanity—

Which the book itself cannot answer—

Questions the reader is left to answer—

And, characteristically, SF often does not have a reassuring, affirmative conclusion—a “happy’ ending —

Indeed, it is more likely to end on a thoughtful, Or sombreOr satiricOr downright pessimistic note…

As it produces the effect of estranging us from our predictable, comfortablelives—by showing us science intruding on them—

So SF asks us to consider the pervasive role of science in our lives,The danger (and delight) of science in our lives--DO NOT, as the TV show "Futurama" reminds us, FALL IN LOVE WITH

ROBOTS!—

Asking us to consider how we would deal with such technological developments and their attendant challenges—

And asking us to consider questions such as“Is such science really possible?” “What would it mean for humanity if it were?”

“Could someone, like Moreau, being producing such creatures even as we speak…?”

“Has vivisection – or any other form or cruel, unethical science—been practiced since this novel was published—and could it occur again?”

So that we come to question in turn how much Wells’ novel is a warning, a prophecy, about science and what humans –armed with science—are capable of

As we look up from his book and look at the world around us.

Critic Darko Suvin on HGW’s SF’s Characteristic Ambiguity

Darko Suvin writing about Wells (1979, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction)praises his achievements in The Time Machine and Moreau

to the skies but Suvin notes

p. 29: “the fundamental ambiguity that constitutes ... the richness and weakness in Wells. Is he horrified or grimly elated by the high price of evolution [in Moreau]... are his preoccupations with violence and alienation those of a diagnostitician or of a fan?”

So, what do you readers of The Island of Doctor Moreau think in response toSuvin's question?------------------Later this week... video material to accompany this week's lecture

Next Week... Midterm Test Review and Week One of The Dispossessed...