Island Of Dr. Moreau Literary Analysis

In his paper, “Science, myth and fiction in H.G. Wells’ ‘Island of Dr. Moreau’”, Roger Bowen asserts that Wells’ Moreau is unlike any of his other early works; it focuses on the ideas of evolution, “god”, and the bestial nature of man, rather than the ideas of a futuristic society or utopian settings. With Bowen citing such literary works as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Tempest, and Frankenstein, he aims to highlight the “stories” that Wells used to show connections with the major themes in the novel. Bowen remarks on the ideal that the Moreau was a “god”; he could create “man” and was the over-reaching law. By using the “beast people”, Wells is able to create a metaphor for creation and the fall of man, in order to critique the true bestial nature of man. But, while Bowen may be able to list source after source of connections he can make to Moreau, the extent that he uses information from each source is severely lacking, as though he just named off sources to say that he could.

Moreau. “Circe, skilled in botany, becomes Dr. Moreau, skilled in the science and chemistry of the human form” (Bowen, 321) creates a parallel, almost as if the two characters were one in the same; both known for their skills in the metamorphosis of one form to another, be it man-to-beast or vice versa. “Wells takes the ruthless, single minded quest of Dr. Frankenstein and recasts it for a generation weaned on the Darwinian revolution.” (Bowen 322) Wells writes his novel in the years following Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”. Instead of writing in his usual fashion, crafting futuristic creatures and extravagant lands, Wells constructs, or rather de-constructs, man into a more primitive life. Bowen equates the creation of beast to the creation of man, and the deitification of