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- The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat. He is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals via vivisection.
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Sep 6, 2022 · Published Sep 6, 2022. Marlon Brando wanted to be a dolphin. Whatever you've heard about the notorious filming of the 1996 science fiction film, The Island of Dr. Moreau, it's probably true.
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The Island of Doctor Moreau, science fiction novel by H.G. Wells, published in 1896. The classic work focuses on a mad scientist’s experiments involving vivisection to address such issues as evolution and ethics.
The story takes the form of a manuscript accidentally found by the nephew of the protagonist, Edward Prendick. It begins with a shipwrecked Prendick being rescued and taken aboard a vessel called Ipecacuanha. There he meets Montgomery, a former medical student, and a “misshapen” man who moves with “animal swiftness.” He later encounters a variety of animals on board as well as the drunk Captain Davies. They eventually come to a remote island, where Montgomery and the animals disembark. Davies refuses to allow Prendick to stay on the Ipecacuanha, and he is forced into a dinghy and set adrift. However, Prendick is saved by Montgomery and others, including a white-haired man and several “strange brutish-looking fellows.” Once on land, Prendick spots odd creatures and is informed that the island is a sort of “biological station.” Later he learns that the white-haired man is named Moreau. Prendick realizes that he is Dr. Moreau, a “notorious vivisector” who was forced to leave England some years earlier after his shocking experiments were publicized.
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Attempting to escape the painful cries of a puma in Moreau’s enclosure, Prendick explores the island and is chased by a creature, which he strikes with a rock. Shortly thereafter Prendick comes to believe that Moreau is performing vivisections on humans. Frightened, he flees and encounters an Ape-man, who takes Prendick to his home, where he meets other creatures. They teach him the strictly enforced laws, which include not eating fish or flesh and not chasing other humans, and sing a song extolling the powers of an unnamed being, whom Prendick believes to be Moreau. Desperate to escape Montgomery and the doctor, Prendick decides to drown himself. However, he is instead encouraged to listen to Moreau’s explanation of his experiments. The doctor discloses that his work does not involve humans, instead the creatures are “humanised animals.” Moreau is dismissive of the pain he inflicts and is not troubled by the ethics of his actions. He also notes that his creations begin to revert back to their original nature, at which point he releases them into the wilds of the island. Prendick is seemingly placated, and the manuscript then describes both the island and the various Beast Folk, including Leopard-man, Swine men and women, wolf-creatures, and M’ling, who most resembles a human.
The Island of Doctor Moreau was written at a time when vivisection was hotly debated—and increasingly denounced—and as Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was gaining in popularity. The story subsequently took on even greater significance given contemporary debates about cloning and genetic experimentation. As with Wells’s The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, the reader is confronted with a gruesome extrapolation of evolution theory. The doctor also represents a series of fundamental anxieties about the role of science and human responsibility. He is the archetypal mad scientist who creates without due care or any apparent concern for the consequences of his work and is as vile as the beasts he manipulates.
The novel was adapted for television and film, and John Frankenheimer directed a 1996 movie that starred Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer.
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In his preface to The Works of H.G. Wells, Volume 2, The Atlantic Edition (1924), Wells explains that The Island of Dr. Moreau was inspired by the trial of Oscar Wilde . "The Island of Doctor Moreau" was written in 1895, and it was begun while "The Wonderful Visit" was still in hand.
- Herbert George Wells
- United Kingdom
- 1896
- Science fiction
- The Island of Dr. Moreau was inspired by an emotional debate over animal experimentation. Wells was both a student and teacher of evolutionary biology, earning his Bachelor of Science degree in zoology just six years before The Island of Dr. Moreau was published.
- Upon publication, The Island of Dr. Moreau was considered lurid and gratuitously violent. With its references to vivisection and cannibalism, The Island of Dr. Moreau was shockingly graphic for its time.
- H.G. Wells didn’t think The Island of Doctor Moreau was particularly outlandish. In an 1895 essay called “The Limits of Individual Plasticity,” Wells seems to have argued that results like the ones his fictional doctor would later achieve were not purely the stuff of imagination.
- The Island of Doctor Moreau popularized a major science-fiction trope. The Island of Dr. Moreau is considered the first significant instance of a science-fiction convention known as “uplift,” where one species attempts to influence the development of another, often by nudging it up the evolutionary ladder.
Plot. The Island of Doctor Moreau is the account of one Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked Englishman with a scientific education. A passing ship takes him aboard and a man named Montgomery revives him. The ship is bound for Noble's Isle. Prendick also meets a grotesque bestial native named M'ling who appears to be Montgomery's manservant.
Unable to assimilate back into civilized society, he retires to the countryside and seeks solace in the solitary study of astronomy. A short summary of H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau. This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of The Island of Dr. Moreau.
The Island of Dr. Moreau: Directed by John Frankenheimer, Richard Stanley. With Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk. After being rescued and brought to an island, a man discovers that its inhabitants are experimental animals being turned into strange-looking humans, all of it the work of a visionary doctor.
