Friday, December 11, 2009

JP and The Island of Doctor Moreau



We all know that the JP books are, of course, the result of the influence of various books and scientific theories.

Of those, the most evident one is The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

File:Conan doyle.jpg

The second book in the JP duology is some kind of homage to this book, which in turn is the book that started the trend of the lost world novels (where a group of adventurers find, well, a lost world).

So, if Michael Crichton is the father of the JP saga, then Conan Doyle would be some kind of grandparent.

However, it seems that the JP saga has another grandparent... In the last few days I found myself with some spare time, and went on to read a classic novel. The similarities that it features with the first JP book are so striking that I cannot wonder how no one else has yet refered to it, as far as I know.

The Island of Doctor Moreau

The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H.G. Wells. You might know H.G. Wells from such novels as the War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. This novel is somewhat less known, but still a good read.

It is the story of a castway that finds himself in a island, where Doctor Moreau and his assistant have been performing vivisection on living creatures, turning them into humans. Of course, something awful happens, and then he has an "adventure".

Let's take a closer look:

- The castaway: Not used directly in the JP books, it was however used indirectly in the beginning of the TLW movie. Well, sort of, since they weren't technically castaways.

- A doctor perfoming biological experiments on an isolated tropical island: Just think about it, isn't this almost a JP description? Can't you imagine MC, wondering how could he write a dinosaur book without time travel or lost worlds, and then finding inspiration in this concept to create the JP ideia?

- The ethical questions: The ones featured in this novel are quite powerful - what does it mean to be human? What right do we have to interfere with animals, and change the way they are? MC also focused his own ethical question in the JP books - how far can we go while doing biological experiments, and what kind of authority do we have to do so? Of course he didn't focus in vivisection, but he managed to do the update to our own technique: genetics.

- Something goes wrong: What more can I say?

So, if Conan Doyle is the grandparent of TLW, H.G. Wells could very well be the grandparent of JP.

File:H G Wells pre 1922.jpg

I hope I have been clear about how I think that JP was directly inspired by The Island of Doctor Moreau. If you know of some other source where this kind of analysis has already been done, or if you have your own thoughts about this, please let me know.


You can read the novel here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/159

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