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Definition of Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the... read full definition
Chapter 2: The Man Who Was Going Nowhere
Explanation and Analysis—Mysterious Howling:
In Chapter 2, Prendick meets Montgomery, who has saved him from his initial shipwreck. Montgomery's mysterious response to a noise on the ship foreshadows the power dynamics on Dr. Moreau's island:
“Damn that howling!”
He suddenly left the cabin, and I heard him in violent controversy with someone who seemed to me to talk gibberish in response to him. The matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that I thought my ears were mistaken. Then he shouted at the dogs and returned to the cabin.
Montgomery seems far more disturbed than Prendick at the howling, at this point. In fact, Prendick does not describe the howling at all. He only reports how Montgomery interrupts himself in the middle of a conversation to yell about it. Prendick eventually reveals that the noise is coming from the animals Mongomery is taking to the island for Moreau to experiment on. The conversation in "gibberish" introduces the idea of the animals as humanoid but not fully human creatures. They are on the way to communicating with human language, but they aren't there just yet. By keeping the animals out of sight for now, Prendick can keep the reader wondering exactly who the creatures are.
This passage hints at a disturbing power dynamic between Montgomery and the animals. Prendick does not want to believe at first that Montgomery, who saved him from drifting alone in the ocean, would resort to "blows" with whoever is speaking "gibberish" to him. The hidden party hardly makes a noise, and Montgomery rushes to discipline them. Montgomery's overreaction betrays his guilty conscience about torturing animals. His impulse to shut the animals up rather than set them free reveals that Montgomery is in too deep to stop Moreau's scheme. Just as he does on the island, Montgomery controls the situation with violence and shouting. But by first introducing this dynamic within the cramped space of the boat, this scene leaves the reader with the sense that the conflict is about to boil over. The animals are eventually going to break out and mutiny.
Related Themes:
Chapter 7: The Locked Door
Explanation and Analysis—Bluebeard's Chamber:
In Chapter 7, Moreau stops Montgomery from showing Prendick the entirety of his house. He alludes to the French folktale "Bluebeard" in a way that foreshadows his own bloody end and Prendick's inheritance of the island:
"I’m sorry to make a mystery, Mr. Prendick—but you’ll remember you’re uninvited. Our little establishment here contains a secret or so, is a kind of Bluebeard’s Chamber, in fact. Nothing very dreadful really—to a sane man. But just now—as we don’t know you—”
“Decidedly,” said I; “I should be a fool to take offence at any want of confidence.”
In the folktale, a young woman marries a nobleman named Bluebeard whose six previous wives have all mysteriously disappeared. Bluebeard takes his new wife away from her family to his countryside palace. There is a room she is not allowed to go in. Eventually, curiosity gets the better of her. She breaks into the room and finds a bloody chamber containing the remains of his previous wives. Bluebeard comes home and is going to kill her as well, but at the last moment her siblings arrive and kill Bluebeard. The young woman inherits his palace.
Moreau is telling the truth about his "Bluebeard's Chamber." It is a bloodbath inside. He trusts that Prendick will take his remark for a joke, and he turns out to be right; Prendick is not alarmed. But Prendick's time on the island will play out much like the young woman's in the folktale. He will discover Moreau's secret vivisection chamber, Moreau will die a bloody death, and Prendick will inherit the island and the entire mess Moreau has created. Just like the young woman, Prendick ends up stuck with haunted property. While it looks desirable on the surface to own a palace or a whole island, each of these estates is the site of violence and trauma that won't be easily forgotten. Prendick eventually flees the island, but even so he is stuck with the story of what happened there. He writes the book so that he won't be the only one paranoid that society beyond the island will crumble into the same lawlessness that eventually prevailed among the Beast Folk.
Related Themes:
Chapter 9: The Thing in the Forest
Explanation and Analysis—Headless Rabbit:
In Chapter 9, Prendick tries to run away from Moreau's House of Pain and encounters many things that horrify him, including a rabbit's decapitated body. The dead rabbit foreshadows not only the horror to come, but also the particular way in which Moreau's delicate new society will fall:
And then in the shadow of some luxuriant ferns I came upon an unpleasant thing, the dead body of a rabbit, covered with shining flies but still warm, and with its head torn off. I stopped aghast at the sight of the scattered blood. Here at least was one visitor to the island disposed of!
Montgomery brought the rabbits to the island at the same time as Prendick. When Prendick realizes that the rabbit is "one visitor to the island disposed of," he has the bloodcurdling sense that he, another visitor, is next. The description in this passage gives Prendick a glimpse into the more gruesome aspects of nature he will have to contend with outside the protection of Moreau and Montgomery. The still-warm rabbit is being preyed on by flies, the basest of animals. Unlike humans with a developed sense of morals and ethics, flies scavenge on whatever meat they find. Prendick recognizes himself in the rabbit and glimpses his fate as an animal among animals under the brutal laws of nature, rather than society.
He is right to be concerned: eventually, the taste of rabbit blood leads to the Beast Folk's uprising, the destruction of the island, and Prendick's most dire survival situation yet. The Leopard Man is the first who is caught tasting rabbit blood. Moreau leads a hunting party to track him down so that he can be captured and taken to the House of Pain to be made more "human" again. Prendick takes pity on the Leopard Man and kills him before he can endure more torture. Later, all the Beast Folk rise up against Moreau and Montgomery after the puma escapes Moreau's torture chamber. The Leopard Man's fate seems to have taught them that they deserve to behave according to their true natures, no matter what Moreau's Law says. By reintroducing prey animals to the island, Montgomery reactivates the natural animal instincts of the Beast Folk. He inadvertently teaches them that neither Moreau nor any other human is their natural god. In the end, Prendick's survival and escape from the island involves working with the laws of nature and recognizing the Beast Folk as animals who will hunt and scavenge as they like.
Related Themes:
