The Island of Doctor Moreau

“It is quite impossible for the ordinary reader to imagine those eight days. He has not, luckily for himself, anything in his memory to imagine with.”

This quotation occurs as Prendick describes the period in which he and two other men drift in a small lifeboat, before he is picked up by the Ipececuanha. Prendick does not provide many details of the suffering they endured but manages to drive home the point of how horrible it was. Prendick’s comment that a reader can’t understand what the experience was like is ironic in light of the even more shocking events he will describe upon reaching the island.

“‘You were in luck,’ said he, ‘to get picked up by a ship with a medical man aboard.’”

Montgomery makes this remark when Prendick first awakens after being taken aboard the Ipececuanha; Montgomery has begun nursing Prendick back to health. The quotation ironically introduces the notion of chance and luck into the novel; on one hand, Prendick is indeed lucky not to perish at sea. On the other, given what he endures on the island, it might be considered deeply unlucky that he ended up crossing paths with Montgomery.

“I had never beheld such a repulsive and extraordinary face before, and yet—if the contradiction is credible—I experienced at the same time an odd feeling that in some way I had already encountered exactly the features and gestures that now amazed me.”

This quotation occurs when Prendick first catches sight of M’ling aboard the Ipececuanha. Although this is long before Prendick knows about the Beast People, he is immediately struck by a sense of something uncanny when he encounters his first animal-human hybrid. The quotation also begins to establish the novel’s exploration of the blurry line between humans and animals: Prendick is put off by M’ling’s strange appearance, and yet he also feels a sense of familiarity, foreshadowing that the Beast People are more like humans than they appear.

“I wish I’d never set eyes on your infernal island. What the devil…want beasts for on an island like that?”

The Captain of the Ipececuanha speaks these words while arguing with Montgomery. At this point, Prendick still doesn’t know anything about the island, Moreau, or his experiments. This quotation begins to build a sense of foreboding and suspense around the island, implying that there is something strange and sinister about what is taking place there.

“I injected and fed you much as I might have collected a specimen. I was bored and wanted something to do.”

Montgomery says this to Prendick as he brushes aside Prendick’s profuse thanks for saving his life. While Prendick forms an emotional bond with the man who rescued him, Montgomery takes a somewhat cold and pragmatic view. The language of treating Prendick like an experiment foreshadows Moreau’s cruel and painful experiments on living beings.

“That black figure with its eyes of fire struck down through all my adult thoughts and feelings, and for a moment the forgotten horrors of childhood came back to my mind.”

This quotation occurs when Prendick catches a glimpse of M’ling at nighttime, as he prowls about the ship. At this point, Prendick doesn’t know why M’ling has such an uncanny and frightening appearance, but he feels a deep and visceral fear when he sees him. The quotation shows that the Beast People are frightening not simply because they can hurt someone; they awaken a subconscious, primitive fear even in well-educated individuals like Prendick.

“As it happens, we are biologists here. This is a biological station—of a sort.”

Moreau speaks this quotation to Prendick shortly after Prendick arrives on the island; Moreau becomes less aloof when he learns that Prendick has researched biology. Moreau’s vague statement contributes to suspense because it implies that he is not doing conventional research. The comment also invites readers to reflect on the extent to which Moreau’s experiments can be considered a legitimate form of scientific exploration.

“The brandy I did not touch, for I have been an abstainer from my birth.”

Prendick makes this statement shortly after arriving on the island. His abstinence from alcohol is notable because Montgomery drinks heavily; Prendick refuses to drink even when things are going terribly wrong, and this establishes a contrast between himself and Montgomery. Prendick’s refusal to consume alcohol reflects a desire to maintain control over his impulses, which might distinguish part of why he is able to survive the island.

“Our little establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kind of Blue-Beard’s chamber, in fact. Nothing very dreadful, really, to a sane man; but just now, as we don’t know you—”

Moreau makes this partial disclosure to Prendick as he explains that he is not yet ready to reveal his secrets. Moreau is curiously open about the fact that he has secrets, without immediately revealing what those secrets are. He alludes to the fairytale of Bluebeard, in which a man forbids his new wife from entering a specific locked room because the corpses of his previous wives (whom he has killed) are located there. Moreau’s allusion aligns with his own secret: his experiment room also contains corpses and mutilated bodies.

“It was not the first time that conscience has turned against the methods of research. The doctor was simply howled out of the country.”

This quotation occurs when Prendick summarizes what he has learned about Moreau’s past life, when Moreau initially lived in England and had not yet come to the island. Prendick recounts in a somewhat dismissive tone how there was a public outcry against Moreau’s research; this quotation implies that Prendick is not very bothered by Moreau’s experiments and does not think that the banishment was necessarily justified.

“What could it all mean? A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men?”

Prendick muses on these questions after he learns that Moreau is conducting vivisection, but before he has come to understand the nature of the Beast People. The quotation builds suspense and a sinister mood by summing up all the factors that are creating an increasingly foreboding mood within the novel.

“It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.”

Prendick characterizes pity as an inconvenience—one he can avoid so long as he does not have hear the cries of pain coming from those who are suffering: in this case, a puma that Moreau is mutilating as part of his experiments. Prendick admits that, were it not for the pitiful cries, he could simply ignore what was happening. At this point in the novel, Prendick prizes reason above all and is proud of his ability to ignore emotional impulses that get in the way of what he determines is the reasonable course.

“Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily 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.”

This quotation occurs as Prendick becomes even more aware of the animalistic traits of the Beast People. These resemblances to animals are the literal “mark of the beast” but the language also alludes to the biblical Book of Revelations in which this language refers to Satan or the anti-Christ. This allusion reveals the growing horror that Prendick feels as he comes closer to understanding the true nature of the Beast People. What appears transgressive or even evil about them, to Prendick, is not their animal nature alone, but the degree to which they threaten the inviolable separation between humans and animals.

“I had half a mind to drown myself then; but an odd wish to see the whole adventure out, a queer, impersonal, spectacular interest in myself, restrained me.”

Prendick considers killing himself when he believes that Moreau is conducting experiments on human beings and may be plotting to eventually conduct experiments on Prendick himself. However, Prendick cannot bring himself to carry out this act, because he has a certain intellectual curiosity about what is going to happen to him. This decision shows Prendick mirroring the reader by being intrigued by how events are going to unfold, even though they might be violent and frightening.

“The creatures I had seen were not men, had never been men. They were animals, humanised animals,—triumphs of vivisection.”

In this quotation, Prendick summarizes what he learns when Moreau finally tells him the whole truth about the Beast People and his experiments. Prendick is both reassured and horrified to learn that the Beast People are animals with some human characteristics, rather than humans who have been mutilated. This quotation reveals one of the central moral questions of the novel: Can scientific inquiry justify cruelty?

“A pig may be educated. The mental structure is even less determinate than the bodily.”

Moreau offers this explanation after Prendick expresses his surprise that the Beast People can speak and reason. Moreau explains that just as the bodies of animals can be modified, they can also be trained to display human characteristics in language and thinking. This quotation suggests that the line between animals and humans is likely more porous than people like to think.

“This store which men and women set on pleasure and pain, Prendick, is the mark of the beast upon them,—the mark of the beast from which they came! Pain, pain and pleasure, they are for us only so long as we wriggle in the dust.

Moreau utters this quotation during a speech he gives after Prendick questions the ethics of inflicting severe pain on living creatures. Moreau is very dismissive of the fear of pain, viewing it as a weakness that holds people back from living up to their true intellectual potential.

“There is still something in everything I do that defeats me, makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort. Sometimes I rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it; but always I fall short of the things I dream.”

In this quotation, Moreau explains why he is driven to keep pursuing his experiments; he has not yet been able to fashion an animal into a completely rational human being, and his Beast People only temporarily retain their human characteristics. This quotation shows that Moreau is largely driven by his personal ambition, regardless of the consequences it may have for himself and others.

“‘Yesterday he bled and wept,’ said the Satyr. ‘You never bleed nor weep. The Master does not bleed or weep.’”

This quotation occurs after Prendick learns about the existence of the Beast People; Montgomery tries to persuade the Beast People to treat Prendick as an authority (like himself and Moreau). However, the Beast People are suspicious of the idea that Prendick could be an authority figure because they have seen him showing signs of vulnerability. This quotation shows that when authority figures depend on fear, their hold on power is inevitably tenuous.

“A blind Fate, a vast pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence and I, Moreau (by his passion for research), Montgomery (by his passion for drink), the Beast People with their instincts and mental restrictions, were torn and crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite complexity of its incessant wheels.”

This quotation occurs as Prendick becomes increasingly pessimistic and fatalistic about the events that will unfold on the island. Prendick believes (correctly) that everyone is doomed and connects the fatal flaw of each primary character to their impending downfall. This quotation creates an ominous sense of doom as the plot draws closer to its climax.

“The pile of woods and faggots on which Moreau and his mutilated victims lay, one on another. They seemed to be gripping one another in one last revengeful grapple.”

This quotation describes the scene that Prendick witnesses as he is leaving the compound just before it accidentally burns down. Prendick looks at the pyre containing the bodies of both Moreau and his uncompleted experiments; this quotation shows how Moreau’s fate was intertwined with his scientific ambitions, and how he eventually brought about his own downfall.

“Some of them—the pioneers, I noticed with some surprise, were all females—began to disregard the injunction of decency.”

This quotation occurs in the period when Prendick is left alone on the island with the Beast People and gradually watches them degenerate back into a more animalistic state. Prendick perceives increasingly unconstrained sexual behavior as a sign of this degeneration, and notes that the female Beast People seem to instigate this behavior. This quotation reveals how Prendick retains Victorian-era values around gender and sexuality even while living in an increasingly dystopian reality.

“I could not persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another, still passably human, Beast People, animals half-wrought into the outward image of human souls.”

This quotation occurs once Prendick has escaped from the island and returned to England. He is very uncomfortable whenever he is around other people because he finds himself fearing that they might be Beast People. This quotation highlights the theme of how humans may not be that different from animals.