The Island of Doctor Moreau was also in part a continuation of the social critique Wells had begun in The Time Machine, featuring a somewhat useless, aristocratic protagonist who finds himself woefully unequipped to deal with his circumstances and who often must subject himself to the mercy of the common Beast Men. This is perhaps the universal theme of science fiction. Rather, Wells labors to portray him as a man consumed by intellectual curiosity, a man who wishes to test at all costs the limits of what can and cannot be done. As he tells Prendick, 'Pain and pleasure-they are for us, only so long as we wriggle in the dust.' Still, Wells is careful not to turn Moreau into a mere monster he is not as his creations.

Moreau typified the image of the cold, calculating surgeon who performed atrocities with objective distance and unsympathetic indifference to the feelings of his subjects.

With his story of grafting animals into men, Wells was able to tap into this fear, both championing and exploiting it. This movement did not lack for opponents, however, and vivisection was one of the more commonly touted 'horrors of science.' As England neared the turn of the century, many readers were becoming increasingly aware of the ethical and moral issues surrounding the new scientific and technological practices. With this realization came the dreams of eugenics, of perfecting humans and animals by way of the laboratory and the surgeon's hand. Darwinism had proven to many that humans and animals were not finished, immutable products but were flexible subsets of a constantly evolving biosphere. By 1896, England was well into the Second Industrial Revolution, and it had developed a strong confidence in science's ability to solve problems.

The real source of Wells's success, however, was not necessarily in his incisive societal commentary but more likely in his resonance with the growing public interest and controversy concerning the possibilities and limits of science. Many writers, 'private gentlemen' like Wells's protagonist Prendick, saw him as a snot-nosed little upstart, but with the success of this second novel they were more or less forced to concede his talent. It validated his presence on the international literary scene.

Published just two years after The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) was the second in H.G.

The island of doctor moreau