\u201cThey wore turbans, too, and thereunder peered out their elfin faces at me, faces with protruding lower jaws and bright eyes\u201d (17).<\/p>\n
When he firsts arrives on the island, Prendick immediately notices the differences between himself and the residents of the island of Dr. Moreau.\u00a0 Specifically, he focuses on the features of the islanders\u2019 faces, describing their heads, jaws, and eyes.\u00a0 The first thing that Prendick notices about the islanders is that they are wearing turbans.\u00a0Prendick combines the observation of the islanders\u2019 turbans with the pronoun \u201cthey\u201d and by doing so immediately \u201cothers\u201d the islanders as different from himself.\u00a0 The use of the pronouns \u201cthey\u201d and \u201ctheir\u201d separates the islanders from Prendick in a racial sense.\u00a0 Prendick views the islanders as others because they are wearing turbans and he is not.\u00a0A well-known form of \u201cothering\u201d is Orientalism, which is the belief that the East, including Middle Eastern countries, is fundamentally different and therefore inferior from the West.\u00a0 When talking about Orientalism and describing the East, westerners will often times use the word \u201cbackwards\u201d to describe Middle Eastern and Asian countries.\u00a0 Describing a country and its people as \u201cbackwards\u201d signals that that country is unnatural or not normal because it has cultural practices, religions, and in this case people with physical appearances that are not identical to those in the West.\u00a0 Prendick notices that the islanders are wearing turbans and have different shaped faces than himself, Montgomery, and Dr. Moreau and therefore separates himself because they differ from the white westerners that he perceives as normal and natural.\u00a0 By implying that something is unnatural signals at its inferiority, which is a key part of Orientalism.\u00a0 Prendick views himself as superior and the islanders as inferior simply because they look different from him as well as Montgomery and Dr. Moreau, who all hail from Western Europe.<\/p>\n
Another way in which Prendick classifies the islanders as others in the context of Orientalism is by describing their faces as deformed and \u201celfin.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cElfin\u201d can be interpreted as appearing similar to an elf, which is universally known as a mythical and magical creature.\u00a0 In myths and fairytales, elves are often portrayed as cheerful woodland or water creatures who act as sidekicks or comedic relief.\u00a0 Elves are not the protagonists in stories, and often assist the hero or heroine in achieving their goals.\u00a0 They are never the characters in stories who save the day, or battle a monster, or even find true love.\u00a0 Elves are frequently viewed as incapable of anything heroic and are thus perceived as delicate and submissive creatures who are not on the same level as human beings.\u00a0Prendick\u2019s description of the islanders as \u201celfin\u201d suggests that he does not view them as human beings like himself, Montgomery, and Dr. Moreau.\u00a0 Furthermore, Prendick describes the islanders\u2019 \u201cfaces with protruding lower jaws and bright eyes.\u201d\u00a0 Merely mentioning these differences in the islanders\u2019 facial structure and likening the islanders to mythical, non-human creatures affirms that Prendick is practicing aspects of Orientalism and othering the islanders as inferior, less than human creatures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThey wore turbans, too, and thereunder peered out their elfin faces at me, faces with protruding lower jaws and bright eyes\u201d (17). When he firsts arrives on the island, Prendick immediately notices the differences between himself and the residents of the island of Dr. Moreau.\u00a0 Specifically, he focuses on the features of the islanders\u2019 faces, … Continue reading Orientalism and Othering in The Island of Dr. Moreau<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3874,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3874"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}