![]() ![]() With The Island of Dr Moreau, Wells suggests that colonizing is violent, revealing that colonizing powers, behind a façade of polite society and high culture, are savage. ![]() The Violence of Colonization Similar to Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898), which follows the hostile takeover of England by aliens to reflect on England’s hostile relationship with its African colonies, The Island of Doctor Moreau is not merely an ethnocentric piece about the difficulty of civilizing colonial populations, wrangling non-Westerners into performing Western behavior. The Island of Dr Moreau demonstrates that civilization, created and sustained through war and strife, is savage. Moreau, mad scientist that he is, fails to civilize his subordinate species, but in his barbaric civilizing attempt demonstrates the savage nature of mankind, civilized or not. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) is a postcolonial commentary on empire, examining Moreau’s biological construction and rule over a subordinate species. ![]()
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