Summary

Chapter XIII: A Parley 

Prendick reaches the beach feeling exhilarated by the chase. Moreau and Montgomery arrive shortly after with the Beast Folk close behind. Prendick wades out into the water where he can be sure that nobody will follow him. When Moreau and Montgomery ask him what his intentions are, he responds that he would rather die by suicide than be vivisected by Moreau and reduced to a beast. Moreau then shouts to him, in Latin, that the creatures are not men, but vivisected animals. Moreau insists that he means Prendick no harm, and he and Montgomery drop their revolvers and retreat as proof. Prendick is sufficiently convinced of his safety and so comes ashore, where he notices that the assembled Beast Folk have been curiously watching the entire exchange.  

Chapter XIV: Doctor Moreau Explains 

In the safety of the house, Moreau tells Prendick his story. For nearly eleven years, he has been on the island performing experiments on various animals, attempting to use vivisection to turn them into humans. Through techniques such as bone grafting, skin transplants, blood transfusions, and hypnosis, he has been able to alter not only their physical forms, but also their body chemistries, emotional dispositions, and intellectual capabilities. His experiments have resulted in varying degrees of failure and success, but no matter how hard he works to modify the animals’ natures, they eventually revert to their original ways, at which point Moreau banishes them to the cave where Prendick encountered the Beast Folk and the Sayer of the Law. Moreau claims that he pays little attention to the Beast Folk once they go to the jungle, although Montgomery socializes with them.  

Prendick is aghast at the pain that Moreau is willing to inflict on the creatures, but Moreau says that he views pain as an insignificant bodily signal that can easily be overcome by one’s intelligence. He proves his point by calmly driving a knife deep into the flesh of his own leg. He concludes by stating that the Beast Folk sicken him with their feeble attempts at society, religion, and rationality, but he is hopeful that his latest experiment, the puma, will turn out better.  

Chapter XV: Concerning the Beast Folk 

The following morning, Prendick speaks to Montgomery, seeking to learn more about the way the Beast Folk Live. Montgomery explains that the Beast Folk do not rebel because Moreau has implanted the Law in their minds through hypnosis. Their constant recitation of the Law keeps their more violent instincts in check, at least during the daytime.  

Prendick then gives the reader a long accounting of the sixty or so Beast Folk he observed during his time on the island. He describes their assorted deformities and their animal origins, as well as the unique attributes of each. He also reflects, in retrospect, on how his initial revulsion to the Beast Folk faded over during his time on the island. His perception of normalcy shifted to the point where he began to find the shape and proportions of his own body to be strange. Prendick sometimes wonders if the Beast Folk, despite their grotesqueness, are really so different from humans.  

Analysis  

In these chapters, the cloud of mystery obscuring the nature of Moreau’s work lifts, as Moreau finally explains himself to Prendick and the reader. As an antagonist, Moreau is uncomfortably appealing and alluring. His clean appearance, white hair, tranquil demeanor, and imposing stature all lend him an air of dignified authority that conceals the gruesome nature of his research. He confidently gives voice to an abstract and reductionist view of his subjects, denying that their pain has any reality or significance. He believes that his pursuit of knowledge justifies whatever suffering he inflicts on the animals he vivisects and the Beast People he rules. Moreau does not view the world according to the moral categories of right and wrong, instead finding value only in the sheer pleasure of intellectual inquiry and the righteous courage to pursue it over and against the narrow-minded opposition of others. Such reasoning would presumably justify even more extreme experimentation, including even the practice of vivisection on human beings.  

Moreau’s self-righteous defense of his methods seems curiously at odds with his disdain for his creations. Questionable morality aside, the human qualities that Moreau has instilled in the Beast Folk are remarkable from a scientific standpoint. Their ability to walk upright, speak, reason, and organize themselves into a society represent incredible achievements. Nonetheless, Moreau fixates on the shortcomings of his creations. Their human behavior earns them no praise, but their animal lapses earn his righteous indignation. Like the biblical God in the book of Genesis, Moreau attempts to create the Beast People in his own image and banishes them to the jungle when they fail to meet his impossibly high standards. Unsurprisingly, Moreau takes the same view of other humans. He mocks Prendick’s concern for the suffering of the Beast Folk, arguing that Prendick is no better than a beast because his sense of morality hinges on little more than the instinctive fear of pain. For Moreau, true humanity supersedes physical pain, a position that allows him to justify the suffering he inflicts on his creations.  

Hanging over all of Moreau’s experiments is the threat of the Beast Folks’ rebellion. Their physical deformities and tendency to lapse into animal behaviors beg the question of exactly how malleable their natures are. Moreau seems optimistic that with persistence, he will eventually succeed in producing a creature superior to the Beast Folk, perhaps even from the puma. However, this optimism does not address the threat posed by the Beast Folk already expelled to the jungle. In his explanation to Prendick, Moreau speaks dismissively of the Law, as if it is a primitive religion that the Beast Folk invented, one of many reasons to despise them.  But Montgomery tells a different story about the Law, explaining that Moreau has implanted the Law into the minds of the Beast Folk through hypnosis for the purpose of suppressing their more violent instincts. Montgomery also reveals that the Beast Folk frequently break the law, particularly once the sun goes down and their animal instincts are at their strongest. Montgomery’s revelations cast the Law in a much different light. The Law is not, as Moreau claims, a product of the feeble minds of the Beast Folk, but a tool that he himself has devised to control their feeble minds. Moreover, the Law is another form of cruelty: a set of impossible rules that runs counter to the Beast Folk’s natural instincts, yet threatens them with inescapable punishment should they inevitably fail to follow it.