I’m not sure if I’ll be reading along next time (my reading list is getting pretty heavy), but I like the idea of going international (or at least Commonwealth) with Schreiner.

Yes, I like the point about Darwin too.  The frame narrative and the end of the novel show just how difficult it was for Prendick to tell his story—there was no receptive audience, so he resorted to saying that his mind was blank the entire time.

Ah, if only he had had blogging to turn to…

A journal stashed away is a lot like a Victorian blog. I kept thinking the frame was because Prendick was dead, but it sounded at the end that he was still alive. The only reason I could think of for the frame was that it provided factual details that served to lend the rest of the account veracity: if all these shipwrecks and longitudes are historically true, then the rest of the story must be, too. This would likely be quite a different story told from Montgomery’s or Moreau’s point of view.

Now that I’m blogging, everything out there begins to look like a blog to me I think the frame exists to make the story seem true, like you say Quillhilll, but I also think it undermines the veracity of it as well, by saying that Prendick claimed his mind had been blank and by the incredulousness of his nephew.  I think it does both things—giving the book a bit of an air of mystery.

Like the Darwin/Prendick connection. Didn’t think of it. The story would be quite interesint from Montgomery’s perspective, very different.

On frame narrative, I wonder if Prendick saying his mind had been blank could be seen as a sort of out for him? Not only did he write the story because no one would be believe him, but he said his mind was blank so people wouldn’t think he was insane. And perhaps also so he couldn’t be held accountable for anything he did during that time?

I agree with you completely Stefanie—I think he’d get tired of having to tell his story over and over and not being believed.  So he can say his mind was blank, but he still has the written narrative for people to find to tell the real truth.

I think too that nowadays anytime something horrific happens people rush to do tell-alls on talk shows, write books, etc. but I can imagine that back then that sort of behavior would be frowned upon. So perhaps for Prendick it all he could do was write it down, put it out of your mind (or at least make everyone think so) and get on with your life.

One recurring question I had during the book, is to what extent are we to believe Prendick? I wondered why I didn’t question him more. This could have been a great, elaborate hoax. Or even a dream?

You’re right—the only clue we have that it really happened is that, as Prendick’s nephew says, he had to be doing SOMETHING over the course of the year or so he was gone.  But it doesn’t have to be what he told us.  There’s no way of knowing, really.  Prendick was changed for the worse—when he returned home he seemed so unhappy—but any number of things could have caused that.  So, if he was dreaming or making it up, why make up that particular story?

Are there any textual hints that Prendick is not being honest? I didn’t see any. The fact that Prendick didn’t tell his fantastic story when he got back, even to his family, seems to confirm that it’s true. If he was a huckster he would have made up a story that wouldn’t get him labelled as insane; he would have made a story that sold newspapers and got him on the lecture circuit. I don’t think the book is that complicated. It’s just Wells making up a story to explore an issue and give us some thrills and chills along the way.

I’m with Sylvia. I don’t see any clues that Prendick is an unreliable narrator. He seems an honest, though morally ambigous at times, chap.

Still, Mike, it’s an intriguing idea. It would be a great scam! And I too had the ‘was he dreaming?’ moment in parts of the book.

What makes it real to me is Prendick’s weaknessess and mistakes. If he was making it up, I’d expect him to be more heroic. I think one of the things that makes the story believable is the scene where he sits down and cries in the launch after Davis sets him adrift a second time. Adventure stories of this time (I’m thinking here of Jules Verne especially) with strong, morally incorruptable heros are a dime a dozen. Adventure stories with weepy, frightened male main characters, not so much. A lot of what Prendick does, especially towards the end of the book, is motivated by blind fear.

Well, I do think there is a dream-like, nightmarish quality to the book that leads me to think of it in mythic terms—strange because it deals with very contemporary scientific issues.  But it does, also, draw on deep-rooted anxieties about what it means to be human—it’s like the book is a dream/nightmare the whole culture is experiencing, where the boundaries between human and animal are no longer clear, with animals turned to humans and human behaving in ways that aren’t worthy of animals.  And I do think it’s significant that we have no other evidence about what was going on than Prendick’s—we have to take his word for it, which is always a little risky.

And the nightmare is made even more horrific because it is one we cannot wake up from and say it was only a bad dream.