The Man or The Bear: The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

27 August 2026

I believe in synchronicity.

Everything seems connected by threads (string theory), and coincidences are often poignant or meaningful. When I finished Stephen King’s 11/22/63, I picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Bluebeard, and, at 40 pages in, I realized my misapprehension (I was conflating Bluebeard with Blackbeard), as the story did not seem to be about any sort of pirate. Indeed, it turns out the original Bluebeard, as written by the French author Charles Perrault, is a tale about a nobleman who murders off each of his wives in turn to marry another, younger wife. He keeps the dead wives strung up in a locked cellar. Henry XIII but creepier.

Anyway, when dropping off my son, Grant, at Baylor for the fall semester, I accidentally left Vonnegut’s Bluebeard on the back seat of his car—I’ll just get it from him sometime later. So I cannot yet know why Vonnegut’s novel carries that title, although I have my suspicions based on what I’d read thus far.

Thankfully, I had a copy of The Island of Dr. Moreau in my tote just-in-case. The book is tiny; at 103 pages, it is just a novella, and I devoured it on my flight home from Baylor (Dallas to Charlotte). The craziest thing: “Bluebeard’s Chamber” is mentioned by Moreau himself in reference to his vivisection operating room (21)! And now that I understand the story of Bluebeard, the allusion makes sense, and the synchronicity is just wild: I’d never heard of Bluebeard before last week!

Ok so let’s start with the ***SPOILER WARNING*** here because there’s no way to discuss this text without giving most of the mystery away.

The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells (1896) is an early science fiction tale reminiscent (a bit) of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). The protagonist, Edward Prendick, is marooned and lands on Moreau’s Island, where the doctor is conducting experiments vivisecting animals to either mix their species or give them human-like qualities. The aspects of the text I find most worthy of note are Wells’s choice to employ the first-person limited point of view, the (outdated?) specism redolent throughout, and the story’s moral and ethical suggestions.

It should not surprise anyone that Wells chose the first-person limited point of view for this story, since the whole intent of the novel’s premise is concealment and mystery: Moreau was banished from civilized society for his ideas, and nobody knows about this island or what happens on it. We have the mystery of the aforementioned locked operating room (Bluebeard’s Chamber) and the mystery of the island’s inhabitants: who—and what—are they? What is going on here? None of this mystery could be accomplished with a third-person omniscient point of view. Marooned on the island, Prendick knows nothing, and through him, along with him, the reader experiences the island’s unfolding mystery and horror. This is a craft feature to consider for writing mystery/horror. Withholding information is a lot easier when the protagonist, and thereby reader, knows nothing.

Another thing that struck me about this novel was Moreau’s specist suggestion that we can somehow improve animals by giving them human-like traits, such as standing on two legs instead of four (no, the likeness to Animal Farm (1945) is not lost on me here), drinking water instead of slurping it, eating vegetables instead of killing other animals, speaking somewhat comprehensibly, and abiding by laws. Some of these traits are purely physical, like altering the animals’ noses, faces, limbs, and stature. Some of these traits are intellectual, suggesting that adjustments to brain structure might make animals more civilized. For example, Moreau talks about where in the ape’s body lies “the great difference between man and monkey” (54). However, without adjustment to DNA, obviously, we know such surgical outcomes are absurd, but let’s set that aside and instead offer Wells the suspension of our disbelief. The ethics of animal cruelty aside (at one point Prendick suggests that Moreau is, in fact, the most brutish of all the beasts on the island: “I began to see the viler aspect of Moreau’s cruelty” (74)), what bothers me about Moreau’s experiments is the inherent suggestion that animals would somehow benefit from becoming more human.

That humans are a superior species somehow set apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is a distinctly Christian belief founded in the book of Genesis, where God assigns Adam to the care of animals. Many Christians further interpret this scripture to mean that humans are the only conscious species—and that consciousness itself is what sets humans apart. However, recent scientific research on consciousness suggests, in fact, that consciousness may be fundamental to life in general, not humanity specifically. If you’re interested in learning more about this theory, check out Annaka Harris’s book, Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mysteries of the Mind. Or you can check out Harris’s interviews and podcasts, if you prefer to listen. Harris points out that the human head and physiognomy have evolved for human survival, but that there are almost limitless signs and signals from the outer world that our senses never evolved to perceive—but other animals and plants have evolved to perceive them for their own survival. Think, for example, of a bat’s use of sonar, or of the subterranean chemical communication networks of fungi and trees. Consider the light spectrum, and that only a portion of it is visible to the human eye.

I guess, for me, Moreau’s suggestion that altering animals to make them more human-like as a sort of “gift” to them was fundamentally unacceptable—and perhaps it was Wells’s point to bring this belief under a microscope. That Wells knew what he was up to is reinforced by the story’s ending, whereby Prendick experiences a blurring of the distinction between man and animal. Alone on the island with Moreau’s regressing beasts, first Prendick lapses into an existence that is more animalistic—more survival-driven (98). But later, as Prendick reassimilates into civilized society, he begins to perceive of the humans around him as both man and beast (102).

So, the man or the bear? Apparently, Wells wants to know.

But there’s a reason Wells’s specism isn’t the culminating point of my review: the story’s theme of progress for progress’s sake—at all costs—is too relevant today in the age of GenAI. The tragedy that unfolds on Moreau’s island, that leads to Moreau’s demise, instructs the reader: just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. As a Buddhist, my own morality is founded in the alleviation of suffering. We should not cause unnecessary suffering, and we should alleviate unnecessary suffering. Given that moral foundation, I could not find value in Moreau’s experimentation. I agreed with Prendick when he thought, “It was the wantonness [of the beasts’ agony, struggle, and dread] that stirred me” (74). Like Prendick, it is not clear to me that the humanized animals were any better off once their suffering in the operating room (Bluebeard’s Chamber) was complete, as they were still subject to dreading Moreau. They fear Moreau the way Buck fears the man with the club in The Call of the Wild simply because Moreau has weapons and what they perceive to be a higher intelligence.

OK. So Moreau conducts these experiments—buy why? To what great end? Whom does it truly benefit beyond Moreau’s own ambitious ego? Do you hear that, tech gazillionaires? Why? To what great end? Even the gazillionaires themselves won’t let their own children use these AI products, and they are telling us their products spell out the beginning of the end.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

…which leads me to an unexpected and final point: self-anaesthetization. Some days I wonder, “how can I, a sensitive, continue on each day in this ever-more-artificial world?” And some days, like poor Montgomery who saw no potential for escape from his living hell, I want to self-anaesthetize:

“Damnation!” he exclaimed, at some petulance of mine. “Can’t you see I’m in a worse hole than you are?” And he got up and went for the brandy. “Drink,” he said, returning. “You logic-chopping, chalky-faced saint of an atheist, drink” (83).

Whether self-anaesthetization take the form of food, drink, books, movies, doomscrolling, or other means of escape—it doesn’t matter. It is the treatment of a symptom, not the underlying disease. The underlying dis-ease.

Moreau’s Island. Bluebeard’s Chamber. Our future with AI. Do we really want to go there? Or can we, please, think twice? At this point, I’m choosing the bear.