The Island of Dr. Moreau

Story 6/31

The Island of Dr Moreau

Herbert George Wells

Listening Time: 4 hours 39 minutes

Link: https://librivox.org/the-island-of-dr-moreau-by-hg-wells/

Themes: Scientific Ethics, Dogma

Quote: “Whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I
could not live.”

I feel really blessed to live in the current era! I mean, I know we deal with a lot of issues.We're still trying to figure out stuff like...

 "Is abortion acceptable?" and

"Should we really be using embryos as a source of stem cells for research?" 

I can hardly imagine what it must have been like for the average person during the time of Darwin and Huxley, when many of the scientific principles we now live by were relatively new. I'm certain it must have dramatically changed the way a lot of people saw themselves, and how they saw the future of the world around them.

How do you view yourself within a biologic framework? How do your see yourself as part of a continuum of the "natural" world? What makes me a person?

These are perspectives on life that I typically take for granite, because I grew up with a degree of familiarity with them. But then I started reading works like this one: it's the dawn of the modern biological-scientific era. People aren't as scared of shady aristocrats, creepy castles and ghosts as they used to be. Now people are scared of science; or more particularly, the things we might discover through science...about who we are and why we do the things we do..

Are we not men?

This is the type of story that, if I heard someone explain the plot to me, I'd probably think it was a little cheesy. It's fortunate, then, that I was not familiar with this book before I read it. There are aspects of it that are very chilling and thought provoking, particularly in the last three chapters, but (from the modern perspective particularly) you do have to suspend disbelief for a bit.

Also helped me add my own color to the story. I had my own vision for what the various characters looked like, and when I finally saw some screenshots for the movie adaptions...

"That is NOT what they LOOK LIKE!!"