The Island of Dr. Moreau
Author: H.G. Wells
Picked this up on a whim and quite enjoyed it.
A man is lost at sea, rescued by some sailors and ends up stuck on an island where a doctor and his assistant reside. Strange experiments are done on this island.
As the main character (Edward) first meets Dr. Moreau and his assistant, he notices their acquaintances have a strange appearance, but can’t quite put his finger on what is wrong with them. They also seem to move unnaturally.
I think one of my favourite scenes was early on, before we fully knew what was happening on the island when Edward leaves his hut and explores the island. While exploring, he encounters a man on all fours, lapping water from a stream. This naturally freaks him out. He also has the odd feeling he is being stalked. It’s pitch black and his terror increases as he becomes more and more sure he is being stalked. He sees a light in the distance which is his hut, and makes a dash for it but can hear the thing stalking him from behind getting closer and closer. He makes it out alive by turning and bashing the creature on the head before it can attack him, and then makes it back to safety.
Wells did such a great job of writing the rising tension of that whole scene, from the strange encounter at first, to meeting more of the creatures and then ultimately being chased by what we later learn is the leopard man.
We learn that Dr. Moreau is taking different animals and grafting them into human form essentially. He is also changing the way their brains work, which allows them to talk a little bit and have some mental function, though very lacking. Over time, the effect wears off, and the creatures revert to their true nature. This makes the leopard man, hyena man, bear man etc particularly dangerous, especially when they got a taste for blood!
Edward makes it off the island eventually, but struggles getting back into normal life. No one believes him without calling him crazy. But he also can’t look at humans the same way, without seeing that animal side that he experienced on the island. I liked the ending of the book:
For that reason I live near the broad free downland, and can escape thither when this shadow is over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then, under the wind-swept sky. When I lived in London the horror was wellnigh insupportable. I could not get away from men; their voices came through windows; locked doors were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me, furtive craving men glance jealously at me, weary pale workers go coughing by me, with tired eyes and eager paces like wounded deer dripping blood, old people, bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves, and all heeding a ragged tail of gibing children. Then I would turn aside into some chapel, and even there, such was my disturbance, it seemed that the preacher gibbered Big Thins even as the Ape Man had done; or into some library, and there the intent faces over the books seemed but patient creatures waiting for prey. Particularly nauseous were the blank expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be, so that I did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone. And even is seemed that I, too, was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal tormented with some strange disorder in its brain, that sent it to wander alone, like a sheep stricken with the gid.
But this is a mood that comes to me now – I thank God – more rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books, bright windows, in this life of ours lit by the shining souls of men. I see few strangers, and have but a small household. My days I devote to reading and to experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy, There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more 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.
Edward Prendick