The Island of Doctor Moreau

H. G. Wells
The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)

Outra obra de H.G. Wells que conta com várias adaptações ao cinema. Recordo ter visto na televisão excertos, pelo menos, da adaptação de 1932 possivelmente, intitulada Island of Lost Souls, com Charles Laughton e Bela Lugosi, realizada por Erle C. Kenton. Li também, em tempos, A Outra Ilha do Dr. Moreau, do britânico Brian Aldiss, que glosava o tema. Isto para dizer que o tema de The Island of Dr. Moreau é intemporal.
Edward Prendick, último sobrevivente de um naufrágio no Pacífico equatorial, é recolhido quase inconsciente num navio capitaneado por um marinheiro de mau génio, fretado por um misterioso médico, Montgomery, que se faz acompanhar por uma estranha carga de animais ferozes. A malfadada viagem termina no destino de Montgomery, uma ilha desconhecida onde se procede à descarga; Prendick, que se tinha inimistado com a capitão, é expelido do navio, e assim se torna num visitante forçado da ilha, onde conhece o Dr. Moreau.
Esta obra questiona os limites éticos da ciência, pois o Dr. Moreau, como todos devem saber ainda que não tenham lido o livro, faz experiências com animais – vivissecção, enxertos de corpos na tentativa de recriar um novo ser, dando-lhes uma condição semi-humana em corpos grotescos, condição que esses animais não pediram nem podem recusar, significando o aprisionamento da sua ampliada consciência num inferno vivo. Aquilo que no final do séc. XIX se traduzia em transfusões de sangue e serragem de ossos, tem um paralelo nos nossos dias com as manipulações de ADN, com cientistas a brincar aos deuses, convencidos que vão corrigir aquilo que consideram ser as imperfeições da Natureza.

A strange persuasion came upon me, that, save for the grossness of the line, the grotesqueness of the forms, I had here before me the whole balance of human life in miniature, the whole interplay of instinct, reason, and fate in its simplest form. The Leopard-man had happened to go under: that was all the difference. Poor brute!
Poor brutes! I began to see the viler aspect of Moreau's cruelty. I had not thought before of the pain and trouble that came to these poor victims after they had passed from Moreau's hands. I had shivered only at the days of actual torment in the enclosure. But now that seemed to me the lesser part. Before, they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau—and for what? It was the wantonness of it that stirred me.
Had Moreau had any intelligible object, I could have sympathised at least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that. I could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate. But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity, his mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were thrown out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at last to die painfully. They were wretched in themselves; the old animal hate moved them to trouble one another; the Law held them back from a brief hot struggle and a decisive end to their natural animosities.
In those days my fear of the Beast People went the way of my personal fear for Moreau. I fell indeed into a morbid state, deep and enduring, and alien to fear, which has left permanent scars upon my mind. I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world when I saw it suffering the painful disorder of this island. A blind Fate, a vast pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence and I, Moreau (by his passion for research), Montgomery (by his passion for drink), the Beast People with their instincts and mental restrictions, were torn and crushed, ruthlessly, inevitably, amid the infinite complexity of its incessant wheels. But this condition did not come all at once: I think indeed that I anticipate a little in speaking of it now.

Li anteriormente:
The Time Machine (1895)