The Island of Dr Moreau

Question 1

Some key themes of Novel

Answer 1

distinction between men / animals
science
morality
primtivity

Question 2

What other island story could it be a parody of

Answer 2

The Tempest
Moreau, king of the island seems to be a perverted image of Prospero
drunken Montgomery- Ariel
Humanised Bear M’ling- Caliban

Question 3

Who was Wells greatly inspired by

Answer 3

Thomas Huxley- a great advocate of Darwin

Question 4

What are the three direct connection to Darwin in the novel

Answer 4

1) protagonist like Wells had been a student of Huxley
2) Placment of Moreau Island in actual vicinity of Galapagos
3) appropriation of the entangled bank

Question 5

what did Elaine Showater say of The island of Dr Moreau

Answer 5

The psychological, literary, social and intellectual sources are enormously complex

Question 6

How does Moreau appear non- darwinian

Answer 6

they are not precisely aimless : presses goal of creating life freed from physical limitations and learning as he goes along
uses choice and education - dif from Darwinian Randomness

Question 7

What do Moreau’s experiments imply

Answer 7

That targeted inference with evolutionary processes causes pain since all living beings have evolved in conjunction with their environment.

Question 8

did Well’s believe in natural selection

Answer 8

yes

Question 9

What Victorian acts gave birth to legislation against animal cruelty

Answer 9

SPCA founded in 1824
Vegitarian society in 1847
antivivsetionalist movement in 1870’s

Question 10

What did the Daily telegraph say of it upon publication

Answer 10

condemned it

“a morbid aberration of scientific curisoity’

Question 11

What did Wells later call the book

Answer 11

‘an exercise in youthful blasphemy’

Question 12

How does Moreau appear in chapter 14

Answer 12

appears as God
but not trad. God of Christian Theology but the sort of arbitary power that might be conceieved of as lying behind the evolutionary process
recalls Caliban upon Setebos

Question 13

What was Wells background in science like

Answer 13

received a prestigious government scholarship to attend the Normal School of Science in south Kensington

Question 14

How does the novel begin

Answer 14

begins with a typical Wellsian frame-narration
Prendick’s nephew introduces the story and introduces a note of caution:
Upon being rescued, Prendick gave ‘such a strange account of himself that he was supposed demented’

Question 15

What is presumed by Moreau to be one of the key markers between human and beast

Answer 15

Language

at the end of the novel we see the ‘Beast-Men’ ‘revert’ back to ‘Beast Monsters’ (in Prendick’s words), without language

Question 16

What is the narrator point of view

Answer 16

written in n a first-person central narrator voice

cannot inhabit view of Moreau,Montgomery or Beast folk

Question 17

What can Moreau’s island be seen as an allegory for

Answer 17

society

Question 18

What does the quote ‘The creatures I had seen were not men, had never been men. They were animals—humanised animals—triumphs of vivisection’ imply

Answer 18

a lack of morality
the noun triumph is used with some irony here. It’s not meant to suggest an actual triumph at all but rather the complete disregard for the morality of the situation.

Question 19

What did darwin say about the origins of man

Answer 19

’ i view all beings not as special creations but as lineal descendants of some few beings’