The “Bestial Mark” of Race in “The Island of Dr. Moreau”

By: Timothy Christensen
Christensen begins his essay by remarking on slavery’s place in the symbolic order. He claims that the will of God is used to fill an emptiness in the real, this will is imaginary, and it is used to place slavery beyond criticism. Using Fredrick Douglass’s argument to supplement his own, he explains the view they both critique which is that race is “divinely ordained,” and the dark skin of some men was seen as an incomprehensible choice made by God in the beginning that must be upheld through the actions of man. It is a “kernel of nonsense,” a moment that escapes being incorporated into the events that it sets in motion i.e. slavery. Those indoctrinated by this institution blindly accept this as truth.
Wells attempts to represent the necessary/impossible origin of this kernel of nonsense through an evolutionary view of a parallel symbolic order. Christenson claims Wells needs racial disparity in order to do this. In The Island of Doctor Moreau race is a fictitious structure that creates the narrative and evolutionary structure of the novel and the society on the island. The origin of the social Law in Moreau is merely a performance of an event, and it cannot explain all of the acts that happen on the island that exceed the law. The origin of the law is not justifiable given the circumstances of the island. An example of this performance event is when Prendick cracks the whip after killing several beast men and reiterates to the rest that they will die if they break the law.
Moreau’s desire to create a rational creature of his own stems from his desire to create a symbolic “order of rationality within which nothing will escape his imposed order and all knowledge will be transparently available to him.” (4) In Moreau’s mock origin of society he attaches a social code of behavior to religious law. This law controls the relationship of beast folk to society and religion. Despite this Moreau cannot fully channel their instinctual nature into a sense of religious or social duty, as they continue to exhibit aspects of a “nowhere” in their minds where the most basic desires of humanity reside. It is here that humans can spontaneously leap to fits of great anger or fury. This is what he is seeking to extinguish in his creatures. He wants to take the place of the “the big Other” and be the godlike mind that creates rationality and provides a symbolic order to these irrational creatures.These creature only believe Prendick can be a man if he learns the law. He is commanded to “say the words” and through this indoctrination he becomes recognized as a member of the community. This chanting represents the affirmation of the law, while also recognizes the “bath of pain” as the source of enforcing the law.
Racism is at the heart of Moreau’s allegory for the evolution of mankind. Both Prendick and Moreau accept the “negroid” as a “specific beast person within a schema of evolutionary development that is taken as…a matter of impersonal and objective scientific knowledge.”(10) Prendick’s inexplicable revulsion towards the creatures stem from an inherent psychical quality of his that can’t be explained. His aversion to the beast is created from a racial hierarchy. Prendick even remarks that Montgomery lived with Spanish mongrels and one of the creature’s faces resembled a “coarser Hebrew type.” (98)
He concludes that in the case of Wells race is a foundational element of his thought, and it creates and re-creates the symbolic order on the island. Overall this psychoanalytical reading of Moreau is convincing. Clearly the character Moreau stands in for the Big Other and through reiteration of the law attempts to cover the gaps in this symbolic order. It is interesting how Christenson equates this novel as an allegory for the origins of our society, and how racism is fundamental in our reality according to Wells. I would push this argument even further and say that Wells is critiquing this system and it is possible that Moreau is a satire of our justification for slavery and racism. For the most part this argument is convincing and well supported through close reading of the text.

The “Bestial Mark” of Race in “The Island of Dr. Moreau”
Author(s): TIMOTHY CHRISTENSEN
Source: Criticism, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Fall 2004), pp. 575-595
Published by: Wayne State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23127247