\u201cIt may seem a strange contradiction in me\u2014I cannot explain the fact\u2014but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal attitude, with the light gleaming in its eyes, and its imperfectly human face distorted with terror, I\u00a0realised\u00a0again the fact of its humanity\u201d (72).<\/p>\n
The people of Britain in the late Victorian era\u00a0were simultaneously caught between the feelings of fear and courage, or between both\u00a0the romantic excitement and the anxiety of new innovations in the Industrial Revolution. In this passage, the narrator speaks of such contradiction as he recalls observing one of the Beast People, the increasingly animalistic Leopard Man,\u00a0he had cornered in a scene of chase. The words \u201ccreature\u201d and \u201canimal\u201d juxtapose the following\u00a0\u201chuman\u201d and \u201chumanity,\u201d further placing emphasis on the \u201cstrange contradiction\u201d the narrator mulls over to the reader. There is also the use of \u201cperfectly animal\u201d and \u201cimperfectly human,\u201d along with the idea of \u201cattitude\u201d versus \u201cface.\u201d\u00a0All of\u00a0these\u00a0opposing\u00a0words in this passage are essential to the root of the novel\u2014questions of identity and place. In this passage,\u00a0Prendick\u00a0is FINALLY able to see things the correct way, and how wrong these creatures are being treated by Dr. Moreau. It is fitting that it takes him to see the Leopard Man, whom he is about to shoot and kill, in his animal identity to realize the Leopard Man\u2019s humanity in relation to his own.\u00a0Though he has finally recognized the humanity in this creature, the Leopard Man is still an \u201cother\u201d to\u00a0Prendick\u2014still an \u201cit\u201d and not a \u201che.\u201d The Leopard Man\u2019s identity remained dual until his death.<\/p>\n
With the words \u201cI cannot explain the fact,\u201d\u00a0Prendick\u00a0admits his own uncertainty.\u00a0The phrase, which is separated\u00a0from the\u00a0rest of the\u00a0sentence using dashes,\u00a0pops\u00a0out to the reader on the page. This feeling of uncertainty goes along with the idea of contradiction\u00a0in the Victorian age, and a widespread emotion among\u00a0people\u00a0in the emergence of new technologies and innovations. It is the same feeling of uncertainty that people felt towards Time.\u00a0The Longman Anthology of British Literature discusses the people\u2019s increasing struggle with Time during the end of the nineteenth century, a period which has also been labelled the \u201cAge of Doubt.\u201d\u00a0Many felt there was too much\u00a0time, especially with the creation of train time tables and such, but many also felt there was too little time as innovation and technology began to make everything move so much faster. Prendick\u00a0says he spent a year on the island. A year full of fearful discoveries and innovations on the island of Dr. Moreau, yet he \u201cprofessed to recall nothing\u201d for the space of a year. As for the notion of the Leopard Man\u2019s, and his fellow Beast People’s, humanity,\u00a0their\u00a0artificial\u00a0yet true humanity discovered by Prendick\u00a0in this passage continued to haunt him for years following his stint on the island. And in the safety of his home, Time turned even more slowly than before.<\/p>\n
While\u00a0Prendick\u00a0is recounting the story, he admits to us, his readers, that he is also still trying to work out the meaning of everything he encountered on the island. He is not quite sure of who he is.\u00a0 Like his fellow Victorians, is still uncertain what to make of all the innovation of Dr. Moreau. Though he claims he is disgusted by such experiments, he is clearly in awe to some degree as well. Just as the Beast People were stuck between human and animal forms of identity,\u00a0Prendick\u00a0now finds himself distanced from his fellow men\u2014highlighting the question of\u00a0identity\u00a0that come up all throughout\u00a0The Island of Dr. Moreau\u00a0<\/i>and especially this\u00a0particular passage, which points such a duality out to the reader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cIt may seem a strange contradiction in me\u2014I cannot explain the fact\u2014but now, seeing the creature there in a perfectly animal attitude, with the light gleaming in its eyes, and its imperfectly human face distorted with terror, I\u00a0realised\u00a0again the fact of its humanity\u201d (72). The people of Britain in the late Victorian era\u00a0were simultaneously caught … Continue reading Dual Identities on the Island of Dr. Moreau<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3882,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","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\/574","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\/3882"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}