Laws of the Island of Dr. Moreau

Throughout The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H.G. Wells, there seems to be a continuous commentary on the idea of laws. In the very beginning of the text, before Prendick even gets to the island, he is faced with the concept of laws that he does not understand, with the drunken ship captain: “Who are you to tell me what I’m to do. I tell you I’m captain of the ship– Captain and Owner. I’m the law here, I tell you– the law and the prophets,” (9). Seeing this as early as the third chapter, I found that I was confronted with the concept of an authority figure who assumed power via ownership. It was very interesting, also, that the religious aspect was drawn in this early, too. The captain said how he was “the law and the prophets,” turning his power on the ship into an almost religion to follow. Moreau does the same thing on his island, with the Beast Folk. He has quite literally created them: he takes ownership over the responsibility of their existences. Whether or not he has facilitated it, Dr. Moreau has become a deity of sorts to the Beast Folk, through the implications of ‘the Law.’ These beasts have been quite literally created by the mysterious Dr. Moreau, and they worship him through the recitation of ‘the Law.’ “A horrible fancy  came into my head that Moreau,  after animalising these men, had infected their dwarfed brains with a kind of deification of himself,” says Prendick (43). Though Prendick removes all agency from the Beast Folk to have put Moreau on this pedistal on their own, he does make a point, in that Moreau has become a religious figure to these Beast Folk. The reciting of ‘the Law’ can be eerily compared to that of a religious mass: “A kind of rhythmic fervour fell on all of us; we gabbled and swayed faster and faster, repeating this amazing law,” (43). They are worshiping the standards of Dr. Moreau, almost the same that the civilised humans with which Prendick was familiar might worship God’s standards. Prendick even makes a point to say that he has no idea who the He/His/Him in the chants could be, and yet, he continues to follow in the almost spiritual aspects of the reciting of ‘the Law,’ following as blindly as he did when dealing with the drunken captain in Chapter 3.  

I think the passage where we first encounter the chanting is more of a commentary on the worship of authority figures. The laws as dictated by humanity don’t seem to apply in this book, but in their place, are the law of the authority figures. The way the chanting comes off as a religious experience, just as much as it does an internalising of laws that are followed because the authority figure says so, not just because they have been deemed reasonable to follow, speaks to that idea. Later in the text, Mongomery even says, “Much the brutes care for the Law, eh– when Moreau’s not about?” (66). Plenty of religions have this same idea: the idea that you shouldn’t murder because God says not to, not just because murder is a terrible thing to do.