The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle is a 1923 novel by Hugh Lofting. It is the second in a series about Doctor Dolittle, a doctor who can speak the languages of animals. It won the Newbery Medal.
The novel is narrated by Tommy Stubbins, who meets the doctor while seeking assistance for an injured squirrel and becomes his assistant. In the course of the story, Doctor Dolittle studies the language of shellfish, defends a man falsely accused of murder by translating the testimony of the man's dog, champions the rights of Spanish bulls, and goes on an expedition to the mysterious Spider Monkey Island.
This novel contains examples of:
- Acrofatic: In the bullfighting chapter, Dr. Dolittle is repeatedly made fun of for his pot belly and bursts several buttons of his matador vest, but is still athletic enough to entertain the audience by doing acrobatics while standing on the bull's horns.
- Animal Talk: Averted, in that each type of animal has its own separate language. Much of the book deals with Dolittle attempting to learn the language of shellfish and several other aquatic species and requires a scene in which a giant sea snail has to talk to the doctor through a sea urchin, who translates for a starfish, who translates for some dolphins, who translate for Doctor Dolittle.
- Ascended Extra: Bumpo was a minor character in the first book, but has been promoted to major character for this one.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: This happens when he is crowned King of Spider-Monkey Island, despite not wanting to be a King. The shouts from the people are so loud they topple a stone which causes the moving Island they are on to stop moving.
- Beastly Bloodsports: While in the Capa Blanca Islands, Doctor Dolittle makes a wager with a powerful nobleman that the noble will end bullfighting in the islands if the Doctor can perform more tricks with a bull than any of the local matadors. He then talks to the bulls and convinces them to help him put on a show so that they won't have to die in the bullring any more.
- Bowdlerize: Current editions, with the blessing of Hugh Lofting's son Christopher, excise some language that is considered racist by today's standards, particularly in the descriptions of African and Native characters.
- First-Person Peripheral Narrator: Tommy Stubbins.
- Good Lawyers, Good Clients: At a trial where the Doctor's old friend is falsely accused of murder, the defense lawyer is a genial, jovial, nice guy, while the prosecutor is described as a "frowning, spluttering, long-nosed" quarrelsome individual.
- Majored in Western Hypocrisy: The African Prince Bumpo comes to England to study at Oxford.
- Make the Dog Testify: A dog called as a witness saves an innocent man from a murder charge, thanks to the doctor's ability to understand Animal Talk, which allows him to serve as an interpreter. First though the doctor proves he can speak to animals by interrogating the judge's dog about what was the judge doing last evening (a testimony the judge hastily interrupts, embarrassed).
- Mighty Whitey: While visiting Spider Monkey Island, Doctor Doolittle turns into a badass fighter against a hostile tribe, brokers peace between the warring tribes, and ultimately gets crowned king of the entire island.
- Out of Focus:
- Of Doctor Dolittle's regular animal companions, most have reduced roles, and a couple of them only make a brief, nonspeaking cameo. Only Jip the dog, Polynesia the parrot and Chee-Chee the monkey join in on the voyage this time around, and even Chee-Chee (though a big deal is made of his return from Africa) barely gets anything to do once he's been reunited with the Doctor.
- It's especially noticeable with Gub-Gub the pig, who is usually one of the most central animal characters in the Doctor Dolittle stories, and was even the star of his own book. In this book he only appears in one scene and isn't even named by the narrative — when Tommy visits Doctor Dolittle for the first time, he noticed that one of the animals is "a small pig, just in from the rainy garden, carefully wiping his feet on the mat." And that's all we see of Gub-Gub in this book.
- Prefers Going Barefoot: The doctor is visited by Prince Bumpo, an African prince he befriended in the previous book, who is in England to study at Oxford. Bumpo says that he enjoys England immensely, except for the algebra he must learn and the shoes he must wear, which hurt his head and feet respectively. He cheerfully says that now that he's on break from his studies, he's forgotten the algebra and thrown the shoes over a wall, so all is well.
- Really 700 Years Old: Downplayed with Polynesia, who has been around since the time of King Charles II of England; but Exaggerated with the Great Glass Sea Snail, who is over 70,000 years old.
- Rule of Three: Discovering a stowaway in the ship? Typical trope for a sea-faring adventure. Discovering two is less common. Three in a row is just absurd, and very much Lampshaded.Polynesia: "We seem to have brought half of Puddleby with us."
- Traveling Landmass: Spider Monkey Island. Explained as a freak volcanic bubble during island formation creating a huge air pocket to serve as a float. When the rock at the top of the volcano drops down it punches a hole in the bottom to fix the island in place.
- Women Are Wiser: Polynesia is the only female member of the crew and also the Voice of Reason to counter Dolittle's Bunny-Ears Lawyer tendencies and the rest of the crew being generally more reactive than proactive. She was the one who came up with a plan to gather enough money after the incident with the stowaways; the one to devise a way to find the cave in which Long Arrow and his men got stranded; and the one who orchestrated the plan to convince the Doctor to take his only opportunity to go home and not spend the rest of his life on the island.
