THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU (1896) is a richly confused novel, and its complexities and mixed agendas constitute one reason why this remarkable enactment of ideas and theories has received so much, and such varied, critical attention. Its generic, psychological, and thematic disorder does not stand out as much as it might, however, because confusion itself — biological, ethical, epistemological — is one of its subjects.1 Furthermore, the text begins with great and misleading attention to accuracy, precision, and narrative control. First, Charles Edward Prendick introduces the manuscript of his now deceased uncle, Edward Prendick, starting with these details: “On February the First, 1887, the Lady Vain was lost by collision with a derelict when about the latitude 1° S. and longitude 107° W” (3; Intro.). When Edward Prendick commences the story proper, he begins with similar exactitude, stating what “every one knows” — that “the Lady Vain . . . collided with a derelict when ten days out from Callao. The long-boat, with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen days after by H. M. gunboat Myrtle” (4; ch. 1). He then shifts to private knowledge: although four men in the ship’s dinghy were thought to have perished, there were actually only three men in the boat, with he himself as the sole survivor of that group.