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MIT OpenCourseWare http://ocw.mit.edu For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms. 21L.017 The Art of the Probable: Literature and Probability Spring 2008Annie Ouyang May 16, 2008 21L.017 Links between Human Rationality and Animal Savagery in The Island of Dr. Moreau In the mid 1800s, Charles Darwin’s new publication, The Origin of Species1, rocked the scientific community and changed perspectives on humans and other forms of life. The strange notion that men were distantly related to apes and even more distantly related to bananas forced many people to reconsider the role of humans in the world. The Island of Dr. Moreau2, written by H.G. Wells, is partially a response to the new ideas proposed by Darwin. Although Dr. Moreau neither practices artificial selection nor acts as an allegorical figure representing natural selection, his experiments nevertheless shape the lives and outward forms of the creatures on his island. Through Moreau’s work, the novel explores the differences separating humans from lower, savage animals, and, in a chilling conclusion, finds that, when stripped of all illusion, there really are none. In a way, Moreau uses artificial selection by changing the appearance of animals for his own purposes. However, his methods are more sophisticated than those of, for example, dog breeders or rose cultivators. He tells Prendick, “It’s not simply the outward form of an animal I can change. The physiology, the chemical rhythm of the creature, may also be made to undergo an enduring modification…” (Wells 110). Instead of selecting organisms with desirable traits to breed in the hope of propagating those traits, Moreau takes a more active approach. He attempts to “change [animal] in its most intimate structure,” altering “chemical reactions and methods of growth” through procedures such as blood transfusions (Wells 110). Darwin defines artificial selection as man “adapt[ing] organic beings to his own uses, through the 1 Darwin, Charles. Excerpts from First and Sixth Ed. of The origin of Species by means of Natural Selection. 1859. 2 Wells, H.G. The Island of Dr. Moreau. New York: Signet Classics, 2005. 1accumulation of slight but useful variations, given to him by the hand of Nature” (1). This does not completely describe Moreau’s work because Moreau gives animals major variations (like voice boxes or differently shaped limbs) instead of using small, natural variations. Darwin also writes, “Man can act only on external and visible characters” (8), which is untrue in Moreau’s case because he attempts to alter the animals’ body chemistry (Wells 110). Therefore, Moreau’s work may be portrayed as even more artificial than artificial selection. On the other hand, Moreau’s role on his island is not that of natural selection either. Although the scientist drastically changes organisms and their roles in the environment, he is not an allegorical figure for natural selection, but rather a human being attempting to imitate the phenomenon and failing on several counts. For example, natural selection “generally act[s] with extreme slowness” (Darwin 17), while Moreau’s drastic operations are comparatively very sudden. More importantly, the changes created by Moreau are not inherited, thus violating one of the underlying principles of natural selection, the inheritance of variations. Natural selection must have “inherited modification, each profitable to the preserved being” to accumulate improvements over long periods of time (Darwin 14). However, Prendick learns that the Beast Folk “actually bore offspring, but that these generally died. There was no evidence of the inheritance of the acquired human characteristics” (Wells 127). Clearly, Moreau’s work does not affect the next generation (in fact, there is no next generation), so his influence on various species is far less than that of natural selection. Moreau himself says, “After all, what is ten years? Man has been a hundred thousand in the making” (Wells 120). In this quote, the scientist references natural selection to show that his own work, which is in a much shorter time span and in a smaller scope, can never match up to natural selection’s dramatic and pervasive results. 2In addition, Moreau fails as an allegorical figure representing natural selection because his creatures are not happier, nor are they better suited for their environment. According to Darwin, natural selection “leads to the improvement of each creature in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life; and consequently, in most cases, to what must be regarded as an advance in organisation” (24). However, Prendick describes the Beast Folk’s “mock-human existence” as “one long internal struggle” (Wells 150). By altering his “poor victims,” Moreau has done the Beast Folk a disservice because “Before they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand” (Wells 150). Before their transformations, the Beast Folk were already “fitly adapted” due to natural selection on the island. Afterwards, they must deal with the “shackles of humanity,” suggesting an oppressive feeling of imprisonment. They also live in fear of going back to Moreau’s laboratory, so they definitely do not enjoy improved conditions of life. The many difficulties faced by Moreau throughout his quest and his ultimate failure to form a “rational creature of my own” seem to suggest a fundamental, intangible difference between humans and other animals (Wells 120). When Prendick is first learning about the Beast Folk, he observes, “Each of these creatures, despite its human form…had woven into it, into its movements, into the expression of its countenance, into its whole presence, some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of the beast” (Wells 65). When he looks at various members of the Beast Folk, he can tell which animals they used to be because they retain some of their old physical features, mannerisms, or just vague auras. Moreau admits that the Beast Folk are not fully human: “somehow the things drift back again, the stubborn beast flesh grows, day by day, back again” (Wells 118). Although he has


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