'The Island of Doctor Moreau' by HG Wells

While simple in terms of plot structure - the protagonist ends up on a strange island where strange things happen - Wells packed a lot of thematic elements into his short 3rd novel. Adam Roberts says in the introduction that the novel is so richly layered it is possible to get too carried away in interpretation; Margaret Atwood listed ten different interpretations in her introduction to another edition. My review focuses on what I think are the three most obvious thematic elements.

The novel is a tale about the dangers of unethical scientific research; Moreau is driven by his research, his attempts to create humans from animals, and cares for nothing else. He is the classic mad scientist, experimenting with lifeforms and indifferent towards the suffering he causes - his operations are carried out sans anesthetic, his home becomes known as the House of Pain. Published in 1896, before animal rights activism really took off, Wells' novel articulates our cultural anxieties about scientific knowledge being pursued unethically, about the suffering of animals in experiments, and remains relevant in our modern world of biological and genetic engineering.

Wells described the book as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy" - it mocks attempts to combine Darwinian evolution with belief in a deity. Moreau is playing God: he is creating imperfect humanoids out of animals, commanding them to resist their animal natures (to uphold 'the Law'), and becoming frustrated and wrathful whenever his imperfect creations do not live up to his high standards. Evolution - 'nature red in tooth and claw' - is a brutal process, full of suffering and death: Moreau the creates his Beast Men through vivisection sans anesthetic, a brutal and painful process. Wells is not kind to Moreau the deity-figure.

And it is about human nature, crafted from the bestial over millennia of evolution. The final chapter is particularly effective on this subject, after the protagonist has returned to civilization:

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, and that they would presently begin to revert, to show first this bestial mark and then that.

The Island of Doctor Moreau is a short novel with a simple plot but compelling symbolism. It has obviously been hugely influential on science fiction and popular culture. I wasn't blown away by it and at times the simplistic plot did bore me - I considered giving it 3 stars rather than 4 - but I'm glad I've finally read it, and would recommend it for a quick read.