PROTAGONIST’S STRUGGLE IN H. G. WELLS’ NOVEL THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU

Abstract

This study constitutes an identification of the protagonist’s struggle in H. G. Wells’ novel The Island of Doctor Moreau originally published in 1896. This study discusses the story of an English shipwreck survivor named Edward Prendick, who was rescued from an accident and taken to an unnamed island to be mended by Montgomery, a man of science who works for Doctor Moreau on the island. The story deals with Prendick’s struggle to maintain his sanity due to Doctor Moreau’s terrifyingly peculiar work of vivisection practices. The story focuses on Doctor Moreau through Prendick’s point of view. Prendick, as the protagonist, experiences both internal and external struggle, i.e., when he has to choose between saving his life or obeying Dr. Moreau to do his evil bidding or when he has to keep his composure while trying to blend in with the island’s people. H.G. Wells is known to deal with similar morally ambiguous characters, such as in his other books, The Invisible Man (1897) and The Time Machine (1895). This study adopts descriptive qualitative method as its study design as it is this study’s objective to characterize the mental struggle experienced by the protagonist. The study concludes that the protagonist experiences a significant amount of both internal and external struggle throughout the story. The recommendation for this story is a moral one, which is to face struggle head-on so you can defeat it. Hopefully this study can be of relevance in future studies regarding the topics discussed in this study.