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Summary
Chapter X: The Crying of the Man
Prendick returns to the house well after dark. Montgomery inquires where he had gone and, noticing Prendick’s state of mind, surmises that he must have encountered some of the island’s strange creatures. However, when Prendick asks him the meaning of it all, Montgomery reacts dismissively and evades his questions. As the puma’s cries continue in the background, Montgomery gives Prendick a dark liquid to drink. Prendick quickly falls asleep until the next day. He awakens feeling more relaxed, but over breakfast, he hears more troubling cries. This time, the cries sound human. He crashes through a door that Montgomery had unintentionally left unlocked and witnesses the gory scene of Moreau operating on some sort of creature secured to a rack. Moreau forcefully throws Prendick back into his room and complains that he is disturbing his work. Prendick is not sure what kind of creature was on the rack, but he wonders if it was a human. Suddenly it occurs to him that he himself might be in danger.
Chapter XI: The Hunting of the Man
Prendick becomes convinced that Moreau’s work involves somehow vivisecting and recombining animals and humans. Fearing for his life, he rips the arm off a chair to use as a makeshift weapon and flees his cell. Montgomery attempts to stop him, but Prendick rushes past him into the jungle, where after some time he finds himself safely alone. Prendick realizes he has neither the skills nor the knowledge to survive in the wild. He briefly considers drowning himself rather than risking becoming Moreau’s next victim, but he decides to see his adventure through to the end. An ape-like creature suddenly drops out of a tree and approaches Prendick. The Ape-man is friendly and capable of speaking rudimentary English. He fixates on Prendick’s hands, which have five fingers like his own. Prendick tells the Ape-man he is new on the island and asks him where he can find food. The Ape-man guides him through the jungle to a deep, dark chasm that he calls “home.”
Chapter XII: The Sayers of the Law
In the darkness of the cavern, the Ape-man introduces Prendick to other Beast People, or Beast Folk, as Prendick begins to call them. The Ape-man tells the others that Prendick is “a five-man like me” because he has five fingers on each hand. Most other Beast Folk have deformed forelimbs with only a few deformed fingers or the vestiges of claws, hoofs, or talons. Prendick declares his intent to live with the Beast People, and they reply that he must learn and accept the Law. In an eerie, rhythmic chant, the creatures sway from side to side as they recite mantras from the Law, led by a nearly faceless grey creature known as the Sayer of the Law. The Law enumerates a long list of forbidden animal behaviors, such as going on all fours, sucking up drink, eating flesh, and chasing others. The Sayer of the Law emphasizes that none who break the Law will escape the punishment of “Him” who owns the “House of Pain.”
The group is interrupted by the arrival of Moreau, Montgomery, and the pack of staghounds. Moreau orders the tribe of Beast Folk to capture Prendick. The Beast Folk obey, but Prendick manages to escape through a gap in the cave wall. Running for his life, he catapults himself over a ledge and into a ravine. Cut and bloodied by thorns, Prendick once again considers suicide but can’t go through with it.
Analysis
In these chapters, Prendick’s confusion and terror continue as details about Moreau’s mysterious work on the island begin to emerge. Having survived his encounter with the Thing in the forest, Prendick returns to more horror back at the human settlement. After barging in on one of Moreau’s vivisections, he mistakenly concludes that Moreau is vivisecting a human and reasons that he himself may be destined for Moreau’s rack. He flees into the jungle again, but this time the Beast People he meets seem friendly and welcoming. Although Prendick finds their speech and religion primitive, he plays along and tries to fit in, recognizing that he needs their help to survive in the jungle. As a civilized city-dweller, he lacks the animal instincts and skills to survive on his own in nature.
Although Prendick’s fear of the Beast People begins to wane in these chapters, he still obsesses over the grotesqueness of their various combinations of human and animal features. He frequently characterizes their physical features as abnormalities or deformities and maligns their behavior as peculiar and strange. The negative connotations inherent in Prendick’s characterizations of the Beast People reveal his deep-seated aversion to the blending of human and animal attributes. Although he needs the Beast People, he finds their bodies repulsive and their attempts to behave like humans pitiful. The Ape-man’s proud status as a “five-man” offers a case in point. The Ape-man views his human-like fingers as a sign that he is more human than his fellows, most of whom have more animal-like forelimbs. Yet Prendick considers the Ape-man to be similar to his fellows, a pathetic imitation of humanity who tries to walk and talk like a man when he is not swinging from the trees like an ape. Prendick is likewise disgusted by the Sayer of the Law, who intones a priest-like recitation of the Law even as he grips Prendick’s hand with an unrecognizable appendage that is part talon, part hoof, part claw.
In both its cadence and its content, the Law bears highly religious overtones. The repetitious recitation of the Law resembles a mantra or a hymn, and the Law’s prohibitions parody the thou-shalt-nots of the Ten Commandments. Likewise, the use of the capitalized pronoun “His” to refer to an unnamed creator, punisher, and healer mimics biblical references to God, whose name is not to be spoken in vain. In essence, the Law commands the Beast Folk to forsake their animal instincts and behave like civilized humans, lest they face the wrath of an all-powerful “Him.” At this point in the novel, it is not yet clear to whom the divine pronoun refers, but immediately after the Beast People conclude their chant about “His” House of Pain, Moreau arrives on the scene and begins commanding them to do his bidding. The immediate obedience of the Beast Folk suggests that Moreau is indeed their god. It remains to be seen what kind of god Moreau is, but the Law’s emphasis on punishment hints that he is unforgiving.
