Reading About Islands

 

I recently read two novels, both with the word "island" in the title.  The most recent one I read was Concrete Island, by JG Ballard, originally published in 1973.  It is about a man driving his car on a freeway near London, crashing off the road, and then finding himself stranded on a grassy island of land completely surrounded by motorways, unable to escape, either due to the neglect of other motorists or his own subconscious desires to not actually be rescued from his "island".  The story contains some overt allusions to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, but also seems to contain themes of a man trying to find who he really is, and suggesting that perhaps he is only stuck because he does not really want to leave, which I think is a very interesting idea that could perhaps apply to many situations we find ourselves in in life.  It is not a very long novel, and overall, I would not say that I particularly enjoyed it, though it did have a very interesting and even slightly disturbing feel to it, especially when the protagonist meets other inhabitants of his island and the book seems to portray a very cynical view of people relating to others.  It seemed to sort of advance the idea that each person is alone and can never fully understand someone else, but will relate to others mainly as a way to use them for their own purposes.

Before reading the JG Ballard story, I read The Island Of Doctor Moreau by HG Wells.  This one I liked a lot more and think it is a pretty great story, though it is also fairly short.  It tells of a man who is shipwrecked and then rescued and taken to an island where a scientist, Dr. Moreau, is performing experiments on animals, using vivisection to change them to be more human like.  The island is full of human-like beast creatures who are the result of Moreau's experiments.  These beast-folk have developed their own sort of religion, which is enshrined into a law that they ritually repeat, led by one of the beast men who is the sayer of the law.  It seems to me that in this novel, HG Wells is specifically satirizing Judeo-Christian traditions in that the words of the law they recite sound a lot like scriptures from the Bible.  There is also the idea that the law specifically goes against their natures and thus the ritual reciting of the law to keep it in their minds.  In the story, Moreau is also treated by the creatures as a sort of God-like figure, and then after Moreau is killed by one of the creatures, the sayer of the the law tells the others that even though Moreau's body is gone, he will return and that Moreau is still watching them, so they still need to keep the law, which of course has obvious allusions to Christianity.  There is also the idea, while Moreau is still alive, that he is not really that interested in the creatures after he has made them, but that he finds the religion they have created useful in maintaining a certain level of control over them so that they are not a threat to his survival and ongoing vivisection work, which he is pursing only to satisfy his own curiosity.

I was interested to learn that HG Wells inspiration for writing the novel was in part the 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde for homosexuality, which I understand Wells considered to be a tragedy.  HG Wells later referred to this novel as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy", which seems to make it even more obvious that his mocking of some religious traditions in the story was one of its main points.  I think another interesting theme in the story is the the relationship of humans and animals and evolution, and the question of whether the rules of society actually separate humans and animals.