(I know this is the example quote from the prompt outline but I swear I coincidentally picked the same passage during the exercise in class before I ever saw the prompt sheet)
“Each of these creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it, into its movements into the expression of its countenance, into its whole presence, some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of the beast.” (29)
In this passage, Prendick has left his room and wandered into the forest, where he comes across a trio of “grotesque human figures” and stops to observe them. Although there are many different species of man-animal hybrids on the island, these are among the first he has seen.
The most frequently used word in the passage is “it,” which is used to describe the pig-men hybrids. His use of the term “it” shows Prendick’s distaste for what he sees and his refusal to acknowledge them in the same terms as he would a full human. The passage could have easily been “Each of these creatures, despite their human forms, their rags of clothing, and the rough humanity of their bodily forms…” but Prendick makes the choice to identify each creature as an “it,” as a thing instead of an actual living gendered being.
Interestingly, Prendick never specifically describes exactly which features resemble those of a pig, nor how strongly. The words “suggestion,” “taint,” and “mark” all lack a sense of the concrete, despite being paired with words like “irresistible” and “unmistakable.” This almost oxymoronic assertion of the pig-ness of these humanoids leaves their actual physical appearance up to the reader’s imagination. This means that these creatures could have any degree of animalistic features, depending on the reader.
Prendick is both horrified and fascinated by the intertwining of man and beast in these creatures’ appearances. Wells’ places emphasis on the visual unmistakability of these combinations, and yet as these animals/men are unavoidable throughout the island, Prendick also can’t help but notice distinctly human qualities about them. It is ironic that among the first humanoid creatures he sees on the island are part pig, as “pig” is a common insult among “real” men. A pig is stereotypically slow, fat, dumb, dirty, and lazy. These human focal points and the constant reoccurrence of man-beasts throughout the island begs the question, “what makes a human a human?” and plants a seed in the reader’s mind that perhaps men aren’t all that different from animals after all.