The Island of Dr. Moreau

Wonderful horror classic that is scary, disturbing, and interesting.

There were a couple of different themes that I noted. The most talked about is the arrogance of tampering with nature and the cruel indifference to pain, demonstrated by the title character. It's never clear what Dr. Moreau's goals are, other than to simply prove he can do it. (Something also seen in The Invisible Man.) Even if you don't know this story, you can predict it. Dr. Moreau and company lose all control of the situation that they should never have been messing with to begin with.

The second theme is the idea of the beast or animal side found in mankind. The narrator, Pendrick who is portrayed as a “prude” and generally inexperienced with life, is exposed to this while on the island when he's forced to interact with the beast men.

When Pendrick goes back to civilization, he can no longer stand to be around people. Even though he is aware of the “higher” and “moral” nature of humans, when he looks at them he can't quite believe in it and only sees the animal in them. I'm not quite sure why he only focuses on the negative aspects of this as there are many wonderful things we inherit from our close genetic relationship with animals. But the character is portrayed as educated and intelligent but naïve and superficial in his thinking, so this is consistent.

This is one of those novels that is often remade, satirized, paid tribute to and so on. It's easy to see why; there's a lot to feed the storyteller's imagination.

“Mutants” or the Mighty Boosh's version of The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Je poursuis ma découverte ou redécouverte des grands classiques de H.G. Wells, qui sont autant de prémisses du genre qu'on appellera plus tard la science-fiction.

Ce roman m'a globalement bien plu, même s'il m'a manqué un petit quelque chose pour être totalement emballé. L'intrigue est plutôt intéressante et permet surtout de réfléchir aux excès de la science et aux frontières entre l'humain et l'animal. C'est à ce titre que le roman m'a le plus intéressé.

If you can put aside the extremely problematic aspects of this book (it's a ‘product of its time' as the kids say), it's quite an interesting read. I don't think I've ever read another classic that takes a stance on animal rights and addresses current (at the time of publishing) animal rights topics. There are some moments where I thought, “Okay Michael Crichton, I see where you got the idea for Jurassic Park.” I'm definitely not the first person to see the parallel there, and I won't be the last. There was also a lot of social commentary about humans and our beastly nature. Like I said, it was interesting.

This story has all the right stuff to be a true horror film. Problem is, there are no good film adaptations (that I know of). This may have to do with the difficulty in creating the Beast Men. The Beast Men are animals that were created by Dr. Moreau via vivisection. H.G. Wells does an incredible job in describing these creatures, however his vision would be difficult to create on film without intense CGI.

The story itself sets a great pace. Many times I found myself lost on the island with the narrator Pendrick. I felt curiosity and pity for the characters and creatures living on the island. I enjoyed the majority of the story, however I felt that Wells gave up on some chapters. Some chapters were choppy and time passed in odd spurts throughout the novel. It some instances it worked. Pendrick was recalling the events of the island. Of course he couldn't remember everything, however, I felt that it was a cop out. Wells didn't know where to go or how to transition. It's clear this was one of his earliest novels. Regardless, I still enjoyed it.