Summary  

Chapter XVI: How the Beast Folk Taste Blood 

Montgomery and Prendick make an excursion across the island. They encounter the Ape-man and the Satyr. The Satyr regards Prendick with suspicion because he carries a whip, like Moreau and Montgomery, but lacks their apparent omnipotence. Soon they happen upon a tree with shredded bark and a mutilated rabbit, and Montgomery realizes that Beast Folk have been violating the prohibitions of the Law. They return to the house to inform Moreau, who decides they must make an example of whoever killed the rabbit.  

In the jungle, Moreau uses a horn to summon the Beast Folk, who gather and begin reciting the law and prostrating before him. When Moreau interrupts their chanting to accuse the Leopard-man of having tasted flesh, the Leopard-man pounces on Moreau and then flees into the jungle. At Moreau’s command, the men and the Beast Folk excitedly chase the Leopard-man to the edge of the island. Coming upon the Leopard-man first, Prendick recognizes it as the Thing who stalked him on his first trip into the jungle. Seeing the terror in the Leopard-man’s eyes and recognizing the humanity in his face, Prendick decides to shoot the Leopard-man to spare him from being captured and tortured by Moreau. As soon as the Leopard-man falls, the Hyena-swine pounces on the corpse and begins tearing into the flesh. Moreau, furious with Prendick, whips the Hyena-swine and commands the other Beast-folk to bury the Leopard-man at sea. Privately, Prendick reflects on the injustice of Moreau’s tyranny over the Beast Folk.   

Chapter XVII: A Catastrophe 

Six weeks pass, during which time Prendick’s desire to escape the island grows stronger and stronger, though he has no means of departing. Moreau continues to operate on the puma, but Prendick becomes numb to its cries. One morning, as Prendick smokes outside his room, the puma breaks free of its shackles. The hideously transformed puma, scarred and covered in bandages, charges past Prendick, knocking him over and breaking his arm before fleeing into the jungle. Moreau immediately rushes after the puma with a revolver. Montgomery fashions a sling for Prendick’s arm before grabbing a revolver and running out to find Moreau. Prendick waits anxiously, and after a while he hears gunshots in the distance. Montgomery returns wounded, M’ling following him with blood on his maw. Montgomery reports that the Beast Folk have gone mad. He had to shoot several of them when they ambushed him in the jungle. 

Chapter XVIII: The Finding of Moreau 

Montgomery begins swilling brandy. Prendick makes him stop drinking and insists they go out once more to find Moreau. They overhear several of the Beast Folk having a discussion. Some claim to have seen Moreau’s dead body, while others react to the news with disbelief. Realizing that Moreau’s demise could imperil himself and Montgomery, Prendick loudly announces that Moreau is not dead, but has left his body behind and taken up residence in the sky, from where he now watches the Beast Folk to make sure they are following the Law. Montgomery, understanding the purpose of Prendick’s lie, plays along, and most of the Beast Folk seem convinced. Eventually, they find Moreau’s body, bloody and battered by the puma’s shackles. The hideously transformed puma is also dead, with a bullet in its shoulder. M’ling and a few of the Beast Folk help Prendick and Montgomery carry Moreau’s body back to the house, but several other Beast Folk regard them menacingly. Prendick and Montgomery burn Moreau’s body and destroy what is left of his experiments.  

Analysis  

The Leopard-man’s fate illustrates the fundamental injustice of the Law. Not only is his crime of preying on a rabbit fundamental to his nature as a leopard, but the rabbit itself was placed on the island by the humans who forbade the act of eating rabbits. Even more ironic, the humans who enforce the prohibition on meat are the same humans who brought the rabbits to the island as a source of meat for themselves. The rabbits thus symbolize the futility and hypocrisy of the Law. Not only is the Law incapable of suppressing the animal nature of the Beast Folk, it forbids “animal” behavior that humans themselves partake in. This injustice exposes the true purpose of the Law, which is not to help animals achieve humanity but to control and suppress the Beast People, keeping them ignorant of their own power and making them despise their own instincts.  

Prendick’s recognition of the Leopard-man’s humanity signifies his acceptance of the continuity between human and animal natures. Once hunted by the Leopard-man himself, Prendick sees a reflection of his own terror in the Leopard-man’s human face. However, his acknowledgment of the Leopard-man’s humanity produces an astonishing response: he immediately shoots him. Prendick frames the shooting as a preemptive act of mercy prompted by his sympathy for the Leopard-man’s plight. He suggests that, for the Leopard-man, a painless death offers a preferable alternative to torture at the hands of Moreau. The shooting infuriates Moreau, who realizes that he has lost his chance to make an example of the Leopard-man, thereby deterring similar behavior by the other Beast Folk. Instead, the Leopard-man’s death has the opposite effect. The thrill of the chase excites the predatory instincts of the Hyena-swine and others, who wind up tasting blood in the effort to punish the same.   

The puma’s catastrophic escape triggers an even larger rebellion among the Beast Folk, this time resulting in Moreau’s death as well as the puma’s. This turn of events confirms the vanity of Moreau’s misguided belief in his ability to manipulate nature with impunity. For Moreau, the puma is not another living being, but a scientific experiment. Its pain is irrelevant.  But Moreau’s inability to subdue the puma represents his ultimate failure. He is not the omnipotent, omniscient god he pretends to be. Notably, when Moreau chases after the puma, he takes a revolver, suggesting that he plans to kill rather than capture it. Like his other victims of vivisection, the puma has become a threat, but it is not constrained by the Law. Moreau does manage to shoot and kill the puma, but not before being overpowered himself.     

Prendick’s improvised lie about Moreau’s death represents a surprising plot twist, especially given his moral and ethical objections Moreau’s activities in life. Thanks to Prendick, of all people, Moreau’s physical death does not bring about the end of his oppressive rule over the Beast Folk. Instead, Prendick immortalizes him with a tale that rather transparently borrows from the biblical story of Christ’s ascension. Prendick’s use of a religious story proves an effective, if cynical, strategy for deceit, dismissing the Ape-man’s hopeful speculation that the Law may have died with Moreau. Motivated by his own instinct for self-preservation, Prendick exploits the limited intelligence and gullibility of the Beast People, whose simple minds have been primed to believe religious hokum over their own instincts. Rather than trust the evidence of their own eyes, which have seen Moreau’s corpse, they readily accept the preposterous story that Moreau now judges their every move from his invisible perch in the clouds. Of course, there are worrisome signs of suspicion among some of the Beast Folk. At best, Prendick’s lie has bought him and Montgomery some time. At this point in the novel, it remains to be seen whether Prendick can keep the Beast Folk at bay in the absence of Moreau.