describe the island

http://www.gradesaver.com/the-island-of-dr-moreau/q-and-a/what-is-the-setting-of-the-story-41711/

I found the following quite interesting; its source is cited below;

The island consists of masters and slaves. It's not a community, just one man's mad vision and the results of his irresponsibility. The biblical phrase of "Increase and multiply" (19) is applied to rabbits so that Montgomery can breed meat. And further eating takes place all while animals are screaming. "It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice" (26). When Prendick seems to be stalked, he assumes the creature is out to get him, though ultimately it only says "No" and runs away (30), then follows. So, like the creatures later, it really just seems curious, yet the narrative perspective projects enmity onto everything else. Prendick doesn't ask what is different about the creatures, but what is "wrong" (e.g., 18).

It was no brute this time. It was a human being in torment! ... I picked myself up and stood trembling, / my mind a chaos of the most horrible misgivings. Could the vivisection of men be possible? The question shot like lightning across a tumultuous sky. And suddenly the clouded horror of my mind condensed into a vivid realisation of my danger. (36-37)

"But I never before saw an animal trying to think" (51). No, just humans failing to.

"But ... I still do not understand. Where is your justification for inflicting all this pain? The only thing that could excuse vivisection to me would be some application -- " (54). So supposedly the sadistic infliction of pain is not the horror, but pointlessness: "... like a wave across my mind, came the realisation of the unspeakable aimlessness of things upon the island" (73).

"The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless as Nature" (52). Rhetorically slick, but questionable self-justification.

Moreau's vegetarianism has been compared to Hitler's, which Carol Adams explains had everything to do with a health movement's neurotic obsession with purity and nothing to do with ethics or compassion. It's a kind of narcissism divorced from any protest aspect of consumption.

"It was a limbless thing with a horrible face that writhed along the ground in a serpentine fashion" (58).