43 pages • 1 hour read
Adolfo Bioy CasaresThe Invention of Morel
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1940A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: Inspirations for The Invention of Morel
Content Warning: The source material uses an outdated, offensive term to refer to Roma people. This language has been preserved only in quotation.
The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares’s most famous work, drew inspiration from one of the early entries in the genre of science fiction, H. G. Wells’s 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau. The name Morel is an homage to Wells’s creation, but the similarities do not end there. Both are epistolary novels, consisting of found diaries written by first-person narrators. In each book, the narrator arrives by sea, whether by shipwreck or by choice as a fugitive, on a remote island owned by a scientist who carries out cutting-edge and highly unethical experiments. Whereas Doctor Moreau engages in vivisection, creating human-animal hybrids, Morel works in full sensory projections of people and moments. Both result in their subjects’ suffering and death, and both narrators are unable (or unwilling) to integrate back into human society at the end of the novel.
Bioy Casares was a friend and colleague of Jorge Luis Borges, and Borges penned an introduction to The Invention of Morel, calling the book an “odyssey of marvels” (7). Borges’s influence—or that of early 20th-century Latin American fiction more broadly—can be seen in The Invention of Morel as well. Like many of Borges’s works, Bioy Casares’s novella includes footnotes left by an unnamed, unseen editor. Whereas The Island of Doctor Moreau includes an introduction by the narrator’s uncle that lays out how the manuscript was found, this remains a mystery in Morel. There is no explanation for who found the diary or wrote the footnotes, adding mystery and surreality to the text. Both men’s works can be considered fantasy, but while many of Borges’s works fall under the heading of magical realism, Bioy Casares’s novella does not fit the definition. The unreal events in magical realism are accepted as part of life by the characters within the story, whereas characters in stories labeled “fantastique,” as Bioy Casares’s works sometimes are, are surprised, confused, or scared by the unreal. However, Morel becomes a true science fiction novel when Morel’s immortality machine is revealed, pulling the novel out of the fanastique’s supernatural realm.
Philosophical Context: The Principles of Thomas Malthus
The narrator of The Invention of Morel is a Malthusian, an adherent of the 18th-century English economist, Thomas Robert Malthus. Malthus is best known for his 1798 treatise, An Essay on the Principle of Population. His central argument is that an increase in food production will improve the lives of a population, but the improvement is only temporary because this will result in population growth, thus straining resources. This is known as the “Malthus trap,” and aspects of it can be observed in populations of wild animals. In years with abundant food, animals reproduce more readily; however, the following year, there is less food available per animal, which may lead to starvation and higher mortality rates.
A key criticism of Malthus’s application of this principle to human populations is that it doesn’t account for the complexity of human society, such as advances in technology that increase food security and nutrition. It also doesn’t factor in that an improved lifestyle does not always provoke humans to reproduce. Nonetheless, Malthusian principles were often cited by 19th- and 20th-century governments to advocate for population control. Most often, wealthy elite populations claimed that uncontrolled reproduction by the working class and poor people would strain resources. While Malthus argued in favor of abstinence over birth control, his ideas became prominent among eugenicists who often used methods like forced sterilization to prevent specific populations from reproducing. Generally, eugenicists favored white wealthy Protestants and targeted the poor, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, Jewish people, and Catholics.
The unnamed narrator in The Invention of Morel is a Malthusian, to the point that he is writing a book on Malthus. His fear is that overpopulation threatens the world, and he elevates himself while looking down on others throughout the text. Despite his obsession with Faustine, he constantly notes that she is a “gypsy,” sometimes saying she is “nothing but a gypsy” (54). Additionally, though he believes that people can achieve immortality by prioritizing only the conscious mind, he views the others with “disgust” once he realizes they are projections rather than living beings.
