The Problem of Pain

“He drew a little penknife, as he spoke, from his pocket, opened the smaller blade and moved his chair so that I could see his thigh. Then, choosing the place deliberately, he drove the blade into his leg and withdrew it.”

-The Island of Dr. Moreau (p. 77)

To justify his infliction of pain, Moreau responds by stabbing his own thigh to prove that pain is not as horrible as Prendick believes. In Chapter fourteen, Moreau goes on to explain how certain areas of flesh are able to tolerate pain better than others. He also makes claims saying that if man allows pain to drive him, then he is no better than an animal.

Reading this passage made me question man’s tolerance of pain and its similarity to that of animals. How could Moreau stab his thigh without even a flinch of pain? Was this really a reasonable justification for his vivisections?

In the National Academic Press, I found an article that talked about human tolerance for pain. Humans all have a pain threshold, a limit to which they can endure intensity of a sensory stimulus until it is ‘unbearable.’ However, this threshold varies among humans; there are several factors that influence pain tolerance: strain, species, experience, age, health, and stress. For example, anxiety is a major influential factor - a subject with higher anxiety is more likely to have a lower tolerance. When going to a doctor’s office to get a shot, we are always given a choice of ‘right or left arm’? This gives us a sense of control over the situation, therefore alleviating some of our pain, raising our level of tolerance.

The problem is that whenever Moreau decided to stab himself in the thigh, he did so with complete control. He knew exactly where the penknife was going to puncture his skin and he knew when to expect it. In his experimentation with vivisection, however, I think that his infliction of pain cannot be justified because his subjects had no knowledge of what he was doing. They were strapped down, unable to move. Not knowing what to expect, their anxieties were probably well higher than Moreau’s; therefore, he cannot claim that pain is absent. In his case, maybe it was, but that does not extend to his victims.

Also, from personal experience, I think that pain is tolerable only under certain circumstances. When it is inflicted upon the individual unwillingly, then tolerance is extremely low. Stubbing your toe on a desk or getting a paper cut are just small examples of injury, but to me, they hurt A LOT. (maybe because they are sudden and unexpected) On the otherhand, although getting your ears pierced or plucking your eyebrows may seem quite similar to the above two, the difference is that they are voluntary. That’s why I believe they are more tolerable.

So in the end, I think that Moreau’s justification of pain, stabbing himself in the knee, a self-inflicted example, is not at all sufficient.