Humans vs. Animals Theme Analysis

Moreau’s whole life has become devoted to creating perfect human beings out of animals through the practice of vivisection. Though it seems a tall order, by the time Prendick arrives, the rogue scientist has already created enough Beast Folk to form a small society of creatures who blur the line between human and animal. They possess animal body parts nipped and tucked to resemble the human form and are capable of rudimentary thought and speech, yet are conflicted by their underlying animal instincts. Playing on contemporary science and Charles Darwin’s controversial observations of evolution, Wells suggests, through the development of the Beast Folk, that humans and animals are less rigidly separated than many people in his day would have liked to believe.

Moreau, in his experiments, seeks to make animals into fully developed human beings. He is partially successful—the Beast Folk he creates can stand upright and have a limited ability to speak English—suggesting that, at least biologically, human beings and animals are not entirely distinct from each other. Not only is Moreau able to change an animal’s physical form to make it humanoid with roughly human proportions, facial structure, and the ability to walk upright, he is also able to adjust their mental capacity. By excising and restructuring portions of the brain, Moreau gives his creations enough intelligence to be capable of very basic speech and simple problem solving—though they are only given the capacity for such things, and still must be actively taught them. This suggests that, biologically, animals have the potential to reach a human level of development, or at least something close to it. The fact that Beast Folk are enabled to speak like humans through biological changes defies the common belief that speech and intelligence are utterly unique to humans, God-given faculties that separate humanity from the natural world.

However, though they biologically come to resemble humans, Moreau’s Beast Folk always retain their animalistic urges, which must be actively repressed and replaced with human behaviors. This suggests that these human behaviors are not primarily biological but social. The Beast Folk are able to produce offspring, but those offspring are born merely as animals. They inherit none of the human faculties of their parents—no intelligence, no speech, no inclination to walk upright—and live as animals until Moreau vivisects and trains them as well. This suggests that there is more that separates humans and animals than mere biology, since the Beast Folk’s animal instincts cannot be conquered merely through rearranging their physiology. Although the Law is evidence of the Beast Folk’s natural inclination to animalism, it is also proof that those animal instincts can be overcome—for a time—through social pressures. The Law forbids the Beast Folk from practices that seem animal rather than human, such as walking on all fours, chasing others, eating meat, and so on. Each incantation of the law ends with the enthusiastic refrain, “Are we not Men?” This indicates that although the Beast Folk are beset with animalistic urges, they aspire, as a society, to be human. Through teaching and social development, the Beast Folk are able to maintain a semblance of humanity. Whatever stunted human nature the Beast Folk are able to absorb is trained into them by threat of pain and hypnosis through the chanting of the Law. The Beast Folk thus learn to act like humans in the same way that a dog might learn to do tricks or a parrot might learn to talk, and these behaviors are socially reinforced by the Law. However, once the Law falls apart, so do the Beast Folk’s human traits. Without that social pressure, and in spite of their vivisected biology, the Beast Folk completely regress back into animals. This suggests that despite the biological similarities between animals and humans, it primarily the social pressures of human society that encourage individuals to rise above their basic instincts and develop human qualities.

Prendick observes not only human qualities in the Beast Folk, but also animalistic qualities in human beings. This, too, points to a common biological ancestry and suggests that, although humans and animals do not seem intrinsically the same on every level, humans do seem just as capable of regressing to animalistic behavior. Prendick observes that Montgomery favors the company of the Beast Folk to that of other human beings. Indeed, he seems “unfitted for human kindred” after all the years spent on the island, outside of human society. This suggests that Montgomery, though still civilized, has more in common with the Beast Folk than he does with human beings, again narrowing the distinction—though not obliterating it—between animals and humans. When he escapes the island and rejoins human society, Prendick believes he sees the same animalistic potential in the eyes of other human beings. This would suggest that away from society, without the social pressure to act human and repress certain desires and urges, human beings could be as capable of acting like animals as the Beast Folk are of acting like humans. Perhaps humanity is merely a socially trained, socially fueled set of behaviors that contradict latent animal instincts.

In The Island of Dr. Moreau, Wells maintains a tenuous distinction between humans and animals, but argues that it is much slimmer than many would like to believe. He recognizes their common ancestry by observing that humans are often capable of animalistic behavior and animals may be trained to imitate humans, which suggests that the distinction between animal and human is more socially constructed than people would perhaps like to think.