Tobermory Explained

The tone of the story, as derived from the last sentence, is dark and vindictive. Clovis feels like Appin deserved to have been killed by the elephant for trying to educate it like he did with Tobermory. The characters in the story were offended that Cornelius was able to raise an animal to be more intelligent than them. This is a common theme in society today, as everyone feels like they need to prove their intellectual superiority. The people at the party became threatened by Tobermory's high level of intelligence, and their solution was to get rid of him. Often times at social gatherings you can see the same kind of things happening with certain individuals being excluded from particular encounters for threatening the "intellectual ego" of the people around them.