The Island of Dr. Moreau

In 1896 H. G. Wells had the first edition of “ The Island of Dr. Moreau” published. The book took place primarily on an island in the Pacific Ocean. On this island Dr. Moreau and his assistant ( Montgomery) performed dangerous, secret experiments on humans and animals. When Wells wrote this he knew nothing about DNA, cloning, or chromosomes but he did use his scientific imagination. Wells realized that society was beginning to rely on science too much in the late nineteenth century. He wrote this book to issue a stern warning for future societies against their own scientific advancements. He knew that just like his society others will want to quench their appetite for this tasty treat called vivisection or cloning. He knew that eventually the progress of society would lead to the all or nothing control of the evolutionary processes. This brings me to one of Wells’ most important ideas that he wanted to tell his readers. That was the idea of vivisection or cloning of humans and animals. In today's world we are trying to control evolution by furthering our studies into cloning. He was right about his expectations of future societies and his ideas about how scientific advancements would affect our world. It was different because when this book was published it got horrific reviews for being too outlandish with its views on society. I think that if the book was published today it would be raved as a good warning for all the cloning scientists. Today we can actually say that we can clone things and it is more of a reality than it was in 1896. This change has been so dramatic that Barnes and Noble would have had to take the book off the science-fiction shelves and onto the non-fiction shelves. It has created a whole new atmosphere in which to read this book one in such Wells predicted by writing this book. Wells would be disappointed at our disregard of his warning. Another important theme that Wells tried to convey to us was