Intro
Doctor Moreau has gone really gone off the deep end… and landed on his own private island. Moreau is a disgraced scientist who was booted out of London because of a little project that came to be known as the "Moreau Horrors."
Turns out the dude is a vivisectionist—"vivisection" being that fun family activity of experimenting on animals while they are still alive. Blegh. No wonder that when our poor narrator, Prendick, lands on the island his first thought is "Where is the nearest exit?!"
Moreau has managed to set up shop again on an island on which he's still engaging in vivisection, now trying to humanize animals—to literally pull the animality out of them, or inject the human into them. Unfortunately his science isn't the best, and a lot of grotesque and messed up test subjects inhabit the island—fearful of Moreau and his underlings.
Animal theorists are fascinated by this novel because it provides us with a look at Victorian ideas of what makes humans both human and animal, and also because the Doctor's work is so obviously freighted with a lot of symbolism and metaphor. For instance, one animal theorist has read the novel as a way to think through contemporary science's role in telling us what animals are and what we can learn from them.
Quote
"I want you to think over things, Prendick. In the first place, I never asked you to come upon this island. If we vivisected men, we should import men, not beasts."
Analysis
Our poor narrator Prendick is being addressed by Doctor Moreau. The first thing to notice is that Moreau sounds pretty rational, considering he's the Mad Scientist's Mad Scientist.
Prendick has come to the island aboard a boat loaded with wild animals destined for Moreau's laboratories. He's been on the island for little while and is starting to put two and two together about what Moreau is up to, and he doesn't like it.
The suave, rational-seeming nature of Moreau's talk with Prendick is interesting—it seems to have a cool, scientific appeal to it. This is part of why the critic Benston is interested in reading the novel for insights into contemporary scientific practices with animals.
Moreau tries to reassure Prendick that he takes the boundaries between men and beasts seriously in this quote, but as readers we see and know that he doesn't—in fact his work is actively trying to circumvent this "boundary" and is doing so by inflicting pain and suffering, what he earlier calls "a humanizing process."