The Island of Dr. McWeirdo

I have often heard people refer to The Island of Dr. Moreau and had no idea about what it really meant. Well...now I know. Cree-pee. It's told from the perspective of a man who is essentially shipwrecked and ends up on this island with Dr. Moreau and his helper. He has no idea what to make of these really strange-looking "locals" who have very animalistic features. As he learns more about the island and Moreau, we learn more. The novel is a short, descriptive and entertaining book. I enjoyed it a lot actually.

Here was the super creepy part for me though. Dr. Moreau would, for example, take a bear (as a whole) and start cutting it up, stretching its muscles, graphing its skin, shaving its hair, breaking its bones and then adding/graphing/surgically implanting in parts of a lion's body (to which he did the same) and MOLD this animals into a human form. He would make it so it could walk upright, mess with its brain so it could speak English and brainwash it with preset mantras know and feared as "the Law". I find it totally disturbing that Dr. Moreau chose the human form for his experiments. It wasn't just the head of a bear sewn onto the body of a giraffe with the legs of a hawk and the tail of a lion. It was more unnerving than that. They were made to imitate man and surpress thier animal instints to walk on four legs and above all to hunt. At one point the narrator talked about how lonely he was...yea...gross...and how he confused the animals with people because they walked uprights, spoke and...well...he was lonely. That, among other things, was very awkward to read.

I just finished The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells right before reading this book and have decided that I really like his creativity and imagination and just hope he hasn't given any nutty doctors nutty ideas. I recommend this book to anyone who is missing a little oddity in their life.

~Kel