The Island of Dr. Moreau is pretty much Planet of the Apes on steroids. In a nutshell, the book is about a young man who is shipwrecked on a desert island (but Gilligan's Island this ain't!) and there he discovers a mad scientist/evil genius-type who has pretty much exiled himself in order to avoid the condemnation he was receiving at home (England) for his experiments in vivisection.
Yeah. A real stand-up guy, the good doctor.
And not only is this island inhabited by Dr. Moreau, but it's also inhabited by an entire population of strange creatures… creatures that seem to be a sort of hybrid of humans and various types of animals.
Yup, you've guessed it: old Dr. Sweetheart has not only been experimenting on animals but also on humans. And the inhabitants of the island are the result.
The Island of Dr. Moreau touches upon a lot of anxieties, fears, and questions circulating in late Victorian England. The anti-vivisectionist movement was very powerful in this era and actually posed one of the first and only real threats to the growing power of modern medicine and experimental science at this time.
As you read Dr. Moreau, some things to keep in mind are how the story treats both animal and human rights. What does this story suggest is our moral responsibility to other human beings? To animals?
And within the scope of disability studies, this all ties in to our understanding of what it means to be human: at what point does a human life cease to exist? Not only that, but how far should we go to defend that life? Should animals be sacrificed to save a human? Should they have to endure pain for this purpose? At what point do we end suffering and how far should we go in order to do this?