A major connection that I see between The Island of Dr.Moreau and At the Mountains of Madness, is the perspective of the characters that are narrating the story. In The Island of Dr.Moreau, all the information is being given to the reader through the perspective of Prendick. By being told how Prendick feels about what is occurring in the novel such as the beast men and the interactions with Dr.Moreau, the reader receives a very biased perspective. However Prendick chooses to describe things is the way that we are forced to accept it. In At the mountains of Madness, the perspective is drastically different. Even though this is also a story that is being narrated in hindsight by the main character, we get a different experience than we did with Prendick. I believe the reason for this is the different characteristics of both Prendick and Dyer. In At the mountains of Madness, Dyer is a geologist and gives the reader a scientific perspective on what he has uncovered on his expedition. A lot of the information that is given by Dyer is not opinionated. By doing this, I think it leaves more things up to the perception of the reader.

2 thoughts on “

  1. Thanvir Hussain

    The perspective in which the story is being told is an important distinction as you described which I find interesting. I recall one of the comparable recollection of “bias” is when Edward Prendick takes over and starts reciting the laws to the beasts in which the reader is never able to gain an insight to the train of thoughts. It was concluded as something Edward was not proud of which in a way also provides a certain perception to the reader just like Dyer who is mainly only providing scientific facts which you can make your own conclusion of. It can be argued that the several scientific details are presented to take more credibility in Dyer’s thoughts and thus agree with his point of view.

  2. margarita moctezuma

    i do agree with what David said what i also do notice is that in “The Island of Dr.Moreau” Prendrick is rather more convincing than the Scientist in” At the Mountains of Madness” simply because he describes his experience in a way that the reader can actually picture in his mind. not only is his way of narration easy to understand but when he had described the beasts in the island ” part animal part human” the reader can automatically combine these two things and create a vivid image of the beasts. while the Geologist tends to give a more harder narration that in the end when the reader stops to actually imagine the thing that he had found it does not create a vivid image as we all noticed in class. and since this is very difficult the reader must come up with an idea in order to actually create an image of what the Geologist described to be able to sort of connect with him.

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