Anti Vivisection Elements in A dog's Tale

The Anti-vivisection movement was an ethical and political protestation which emerged in Europe, Britain and the United States in the nineteenth century against Vivisection. It was basically concerned with protecting animals from harmful experimentation that were held at that time. Vivisection is an experiment done on the living being, for the medical and research purposes. The experiment does not contains precision, there is always fear of errors. The scientists who did vivisection believed it as a token of welfare to the mankind. On the other hand, the supporters of the animal rights welfare lamented and stood against the hideous experiments that were being carried out. The American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) kept on striving for the protection of animals by providing public awareness, educating, and by giving ideas about changing research methodologies. Mark Twain, was a major supporter of the American Anti- Vivisection society. He stood firmly against the cruelty done to animals and in support to it he wrote stories like “A Dog’s Tale”.

Mark Twain’s Story “A Dog’s Tale” is a tale that is told by a dog. The tale reveals the faithful nature of animals or pets like dogs and the unfaithful and irrational nature of human beings who do not care for anyone other than themselves. They just think selfishly about their material success and fame. The master of the dog in the story similar like the scientists who performed vivisection believed it as a kind of welfare they are serving to humanity in the name of inhumane acts of cruelty on animals. The master while talking about the vivisection with his colleagues for experimenting optics and whether a certain injury to the brain would introduce blindness or not, said “it’s far above instinct; it’s REASON, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go with you and me to a better world by right of its possession, has less of it that this quadruped that’s foreordained to perish”.

Mark Twain being the staunch supporter of antivivisection drew a painful picture of the aftereffects of the vivisection experimented by the master on his pets puppy. “One day those men came again, and said, now for the test, and they took the puppy to the laboratory, and I limped three-leggedly along, too, feeling proud, for any attention shown to the puppy was a pleasure to me, of course. They discussed and experimented, and then suddenly the puppy shrieked, and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering around, with his head all bloody…”Mark Twain lamented the vivisection in this story by narrating the story through a dog’s perspective making it more painful to read it and make the world overlook their decision of carrying out vivisection. The story clearly expresses the nobility of the dogs and the cruel nature of humans, as in the story the master after successfully experimenting on the puppy, clapped his hands and shouted:

"There, I've won—confess it! He's as blind as a bat!"

And they all said:

"It's so—you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes you a great debt from henceforth," and they crowded around him, and wrung his hand cordially and thankfully, and praised him.Twain represents the ironical comment on humanity and especially the supporters of vivisection that how much blinded they were by their material fame and appraisal that no one among them was able to realise the suffering they were causing to the humanity in the name of humanities well-being. Moving on in the story, we see that how painfully the puppy gets blind and finally dies after being experimented. The obedience of dog to his master and mother is pretty evident throughout the story.

The dog on one hand through his life never forget the lessons taught by her mother and on the other the humans like the master of the dog, forgot the lessons of humanity taught him in Church. Mark Twain throughout the story with the assistance of satire and irony disapproves and shows his resentment towards the vivisection that was prevalent in his society.

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Scientific Elements in H.G Well's Work. (The Diamond Maker)

H.G Wells is known as the father of science fiction. He wrote many science fiction stories in his career by including many scientific processes in his stories. One of his science fiction stories is “The Diamond Maker” which is entirely based on the scientific process of making diamonds. Science fiction is a genre encompassing imaginative works that take place in this world or that of the author’s creation where anything is possible. The only rules are those set forth by the author. This field leads in exploring social perspectives, predictions of the future, and engage in adventures unbound into the richness of the human mind.

Diamonds are nature’s hardest substance, valued for their brilliance, lustre, and durability, but are rare and expensive to mine. Manmade diamonds provide a cheaper, more readily available solution. Science-fiction writer H. G. Wells described the concept of synthetic diamonds in his short story "The Diamond Maker," published in 1911.The story “The Diamond Maker”, a businessman meets a diamond maker, who is in a very shabby and deplorable condition. The diamond maker is an amateur chemist who performs chemical experiments in his small apartment during fifteen years of increasing poverty, during which he nearly starves to death and who visibly resembles the medieval “mad alchemist”. When he eventually succeeds in making diamonds, he gets into some trouble with the police, to the consequence that he is unable to sell the diamonds and thus benefit from his creation. The story introduces medieval alchemist as the miserable seeker but modify the plot in that they concede some experimental success in the making of diamond, gold and other jewels. These things had always been vital for striving for material goods, against which writers had been using their skills at any time and for literary means, including the alchemist figures.

The businessman suspected the diamond maker as fraudulent, that clearly depicts the influence of science and when the diamond maker shows him the brown stone same as the size of the narrator’s thumb, he is pretty much aware of the field of mineralogy“a year or so ago, I had occupied my leisure in taking a London science degree, so that I have a smattering of physics and mineralogy. The thing was not unlike an uncut diamond of the darker sort, though far too large, being almost as big as the top of my thumb. I took it, and saw it had the form of a regular octahedron, with the curved faces peculiar to the most precious of minerals. I took out my penknife and tried to scratch it--vainly. Leaning forward towards the gas-lamp, I tried the thing on my watch-glass, and scored a white line across that with the greatest ease.”

We see that the narrator is pretty much aware of the different types on minerals and their specificities “The thing might, after all, be merely a lump of that almost equally hard substance, corundum, with an accidental resemblance in shape to the diamond.”

H.G Well in this story “”The Diamond Maker” alludes to Moissan, a French Chemist, who discovered the rare mineral Moissanite (SIC), “I had heard something of Moissan, but I knew his artificial diamonds were very small”. Moissan heated charcoal (a form of carbon) and iron in a furnace until the iron melted; and then rapidly cooled, the iron would generate high pressure and transform the charcoal into diamonds. Others tried to repeat this experiment in later years, and very small diamonds were created; commercially successful production of synthetic diamonds was not achieved until the 1950s.

H.G Wells explained the method of making man-made diamond in this story "Diamonds are to be made by throwing carbon out of combination in a suitable flux and under a suitable pressure; the carbon crystallises out, not as black-lead or charcoal-powder, but as small diamonds. The Diamond maker further explains that, “You know time is an important element in crystallisation. If you hurry the process the crystals are small--it is only by prolonged standing that they grow to any size. I resolved to let this apparatus cool for two years, letting the temperature go down slowly during the time” and the diamond maker further explains the way of making diamonds and how he was ultimately successful “I let the fire out. I took my cylinder and unscrewed it while it was still so hot that it punished my hands, and I scraped out the crumbling lava-like mass with a chisel, and hammered it into a powder upon an iron plate. And I found three big diamonds and five small ones”.

Therefore, the above mentioned scientific instances from the story “The Diamond Maker” prove that H.G Wells was a science fiction shot story writer.