18 H.G. Wells: The Time Machine

Dr Nivedita Tandon

17.1 Introduction

17.2 EARLY WORKS

17.3 MIDDLE AND LATE WORKS:

17.4 Science Fiction

17.5 EXCERPTS FROM THE TIME MACHINE (1895):

17.6 THE TIME MACHINE:

17.7 THE TIME MACHINE: THE PLOT

17.8 A SHORT ANALYSIS OF THE TIME MACHINE:

17.9 MAIN CHARACTERS IN THE TIME MACHINE

17.10 TEST YOURSELF

17.11 Long Analytical Questions

17.1 Introduction–

Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House, 46 High Street, Bromley, in Kent, on 21 September 1866. His father Joseph Wells worked as a gardener, a shopkeeper and a professional cricketer and his mother Sarah Neal worked as a domestic servant. Wells reserved a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties. He received a government Scholarship in 1884 to Study Biology under Thomas Henry Huxley and got his B. Sc and Doctor of Science Degrees at the University of London.

Later he helped to set up the Royal College of Science Association and became its first President in 1909. In 1891 Wells married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells; the couple agreed to separate in

1894 when he fell in love with one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins whom he married in 1895. Although his second marriage was lasting and he had two sons, Wells was an advocate of free love. With his wife‟s permission he had extramarital affairs with Margaret Sanger and a ten year relationship with writer Rebecca West and had a son out of wedlock from her. A one-time member of the Fabian society which he tried to wrest out of George Bernard Shaw, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels and nonfiction, such as „A Modern Utopia‟ (1905), „The Outline of History‟ (1920), „A Short History of the World‟ (1922), „The Shape of Things to come‟ etc. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes including the prevention of war.

H.G. Wellsalongwith Jules Vernes are sometimes referred to as “The Father of Science Fiction”. Undoubted H.G. Wells has contributed a lot to the genre Sci-Fi. H.G. Wells wore many hats as an English novelist, journalist, sociologist and a historian but is known best for his science fiction. A man of fecund ideas and originality he wrote many novels and short stories with scientific ideas as a basis. For a time he also acquired a reputation as a prophet of the future. He had a passionate concern for man and society behind his inventiveness which often diverted his science fiction into satire and sometimes destroying his credibility, he later abandoned writing science fiction and turned to writing comic novels of lower middle class life. He used these novels to dissect and commend the problems of western society that later became his main preoccupation.

H.G. Wells was regarded as the chief literary spokesman of the liberal optimism that preceded World War 1. His works have captured the freedom from conventions of Victorian thought and propriety and the exuberant energy of this period. He had an enormous influence on both his generation and the one that followed immediately. He worked steadily for social equality, world peace and led a revolt against Christian tenets and accepted codes of behaviour.

17.2. EARLY WORKS

Textbook of biology  (1893) was Wells first novel The Time Machine‟ (1895) won him overnight success and recognition and he began writing a series of science fiction novels that revealed him as a writer of originality and prolificity.‟The Wonderful Visit (1895), „The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), „The Invisible Man‟ (1897), „The War ofthe Worlds‟ (1898), The first Men in the Moon‟ (1901) and „The Food of the Gods‟ (1904). He wrote many short stories and the collections were called The Stolen Bacillus (1895), The Plaltner story (1897) and „Tales of Space and Time‟ (1899). He was called a „prophet of the future‟ as in „The War in the Air (1908) he saw some futuristic developments in the military use of aircrafts .In the „First men in the moon‟ and „The War of the Worlds‟ one saw his astronomical fantasies and off course the image of the martian from the latter book has passed into popular mythology.

Wells eventually decided to abandon science fiction for comic novels depicting lower middle-class life, most notably in Love and Mr. Lewisham (1900)

Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul (1905) and The history of Mr. Polly 1910 and Tono-Bungay 1909. His inspiration of all these novels was his expense of his own early life. Through the thoughts of the tacit but ambitious heroes he revealed the hopes and frustrations of the lower middle class – clerks, shopping assistants and underpaid teachers. He dealt them with sympathetic understanding and they become forerunners of his future preoccupation the problems of the western society. The somber vision of a dying world in The Time Machine reflected the pessimism of the 1890‟s about the long term view of humanity‟s prospects. However in his short term view his study of biology led him to hope that human society would evolve into higher forms, and with Anticipations 1901. Mankind in the Making 1903 and A Modern Utopia 1905, he took his place in as a leading preacher of the doctrine of social progress. He joined the Fabian society in 1903 but he soon began to criticize its methods. A bitter quarrel ensued between him and George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb because Wells wanted to wrest control of the society but his attempts were unsuccessful. He retold it in his novel The New Machiavelli (1911) in which the Webbs were parodied as the Baileys.

17.3      MIDDLE AND LATE WORKS:

By 1906 the novelist in Wells was in conflict with the pamphleteer in him and only The History of Mr Polly and the lighthearted Beal by 1915 can be considered primarily as fiction. Social and political themes and their discussion preoccupied his later novels. He rejected the tutelage of the American novelist Henry James and said “I would rather be called a journalist than an artist”. In his novel Boon 1915 he included a spiteful parody of James. His novel Mr. Britling Sees it through. 1916 gives a brilliant picture of the English people in World War 1. World War 1 shook Wells faith in even short term human progress and in his later works he modified his conception of social evolution by putting forth the view that man could only adapt himself to the changing circumstances through knowledge and education. Wells in order to bring about this process of adaptation started an ambitious work of popular education, of which the main products were The Outline of History 1920 The Science of Life 1931 co-written with Julian Huxley and G.P. Wells his elder son and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind 1932. He wrote a humorous account of his reminiscences in his Experiment in Autobiography 1934.

In 1933 wells published a novelized version of a film script, The Shape of Things to Come. It was produced by Alexander Korda by the name of Things to Come 1936 and became an outstanding feature film of the 20th century due to its special effects. Wells steadily became less and less optimistic and later novels contain much that is bitterly satiric. Fear of a tragic wrong turning in the development of the human race, to which he had given imaginative expression in the grotesque animal mutations of The Island of Dr Moreau, dominates the short stories and fables wrote in the later 1930‟s. Wells by now was aging and ill and with the outbreak of World War II he lost all confidence in the future, and in Mind at the End of Its Tether 1945 he depicts a bleak vision of a world in which nature has rejected and is destroying mankind.

17.4 Science Fiction

H.G. wells has often been called „father of science fiction‟. Brian Aldiss called him “The Shakespeare of Science fiction “ but before we set out to discuss H.G Wells as a writer of science fiction we ought to understand what science fiction is. Science fiction is a category of fiction in which the stories often take the base of science and technology of the future. They always have a relationship with the principles of science. These stories involve partially fictitious laws or theories of science. They are often set in the future, in space, on a different world, or in a different universe or dimension. The plot creates situations different from those of both present day and known past. Science fiction also includes a human element explaining what effects new discoveries, happenings and scientific developments will have on us in the future.

According to the definition in Wikipedia “science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginative content such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than time travel, parallel universes and extra terrestrial life. It usually eschews the supernatural, and unlike the related genre of fantasy, its imaginary elements are largely plausible within the scientifically established context of the story science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations , and has been called a “literature of ideas.

Hugo Gernsback who was the first in using the term “science fiction “, described his vision of the category : by science fiction I mean Jules Verne , H.G. wells and Edgar Allen Poe type of story – a charming romance intermingled with science fact and prophetic vision.”

If we try to look into the main characteristics of science fiction it would include a time setting in future, in alternative timelines, or in a historical past that contradicts known facts of history or archeological record.

•  Settings or scenes in outer worlds, underworld or space.
• Futuristic technology as ray gun, teleporters and futuristic computers.
• Science principles that are again futuristic or contradict accepted physical laws such as time travel, wormholes mind teleporting etc.
• Characteristics that include extraterrestrials, aliens, mutants or morphed beings which are projected as a result of future evolution.
•  Paranormal activities such as telekinesis, mind reading telepathy, mind control.
• Future world orders both social and political. Dystopian, utopian, post apocalyptic etc.
• Other universes or dimensions and travel between them.

Where did the genre science fiction have its beginnings when did we start looking at the world through science and speculation. The precursors of science fiction can be seen in some of the tales of Arabian nights, the tale of Bamboo Cutter in the 10th century and Jbn-al-NafisTheologusAutodidactus in the 13th century.

Margaret Cavendishes‟ The Blazing World and Jonathan Swifts‟GulliversTravels are the earlier science fantasy works which both have adventure in fantastical places. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan consider Johannes Keplers‟ Somnium (1620-1630) as the first science fiction story as it depicts a journey to the moon and how earth motion is seen from there.

With novel as a prime force of literature in 18th century Mary Shelley‟s book „Frankenstein‟ with its alien creature helped define the science fiction. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story about the flight to the moon. With the advent of new technologies like the electricity, the telegraph and newer means of transportation H.G. Wells and Jules Verne created a body of work that became popular as science fiction. The development continued and has become a very important part of popular literature and has dominated the film and television world, famous movies, books and television serials have had captive audience across all age segments. Who can forget serials like Star trek, the adorable alien in ET, the path breaking Matrix, various cyberspace movies and serials. Science fiction has become an inextricable part of our surroundings.

The term “sci-fi” was first used by Forrest J Ackerman at UCLA in 1954. We can categorize science fiction into two main categories

Hard SF and Soft SF. Hard SF or science fiction is characterized by focused attention to accurate details in natural sciences, especially physics, chemistry and astrophysics. The depict future worlds that more advanced technologies may make possible. Some accurate predictions of the future come from the hard science fiction but lots of inaccurate predictions have also emerged from this fiction. Some proponents of this genre have distinguished themselves as working scientists such as Gregony Benford, David Bren and Vernor Venge. Prominent hard science fiction authors are Isaac Asimov Arther. C. Clarke, Larry Niven and Stephen Baxter.

Soft science fiction may include works based on social sciences such as Psychology, Economics, Sociology and Anthropology. These stories are based on emotions and primarily focus on characters. Ray Bradbury is an important proponent of this category. Related to soft science fictions are utopian and dystopian stories such as George Orwell‟s‟ Nineteen Eighty Four, Aldous Huxley‟s Brave New World and Margaret Atwood‟s The Handmaid‟s tale.

H.G. Wells as the “Father of science fiction” and its main proponents: Wells earlier novels were called “Scientific Romances” and they introduced several themes now classic in science. Prominent among these were “The Time Machine”, “The Island of Dr Moreau”, “The Invisible Man”, and “The War of the Worlds”, “When the Sleeper Awakes and The First Men on the Moon. He took up various aspects of the genre in these novels. In his 1896 science classic „The Island of Dr Moreau‟ he asks the reader to consider the limits of natural science and the distinction between men and beasts. It is a strange mix to science fiction, romance and philosophical meandering. The next of the novel is a narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat who is left on the island of Dr Moreau, who creates human like beings from animal via vivisection. The novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity and human interference with nature.

In The Invisible Man 1897 Griffin is a lone researcher, whose discovery of invisibility alienates him from other people. At first Griffin wants to be left alone, he takes a room in the boarding house and secludes himself with his apparatus. The ignorant and prying people treat him as an object of sympathy and mystery. He feels no compunction about stealing from others as his means of support diminish, viewing his crimes as a necessary way of continuing his research for a way of reversing his invisibility. Growing more and more irritable because of the curious who try to discover the purpose of this strange man swathed in bandages. Griffin throws out people of his room and has to eventually leave his room, setting off on a cross-country rampage that leads to injury or death for those who get in his way. He finally takes refuge in the house of his acquaintance Dr Kemps in whom he confides his plan of unleashing a reign of terror based on his discovery of invisibility. Dr Kemps promises not to betray Griffin‟s, immediately decides that he cannot let Griffin carry out his plans. Kemps summons the police putting his own life in jeopardy. Ultimately Griffin is overpowered and subdued and killed. In this novel H.G. Wells pointed out that scientific discovery must not be allowed to develop without social and ethical control or else it can prove to be dangerous to society at large.

In The War of the Worlds 1898- the action revolves around Martians arriving on earth to destroy human life and make the planet their own. The story is narrated by the survivor of the Martian war- a writer whose name is never revealed. One summer night, at the end of the nineteenth century, a strange cylinder falls on earth near the town of Woking in England. Few people are interested in the cylinder at first, but then the cylinder unscrews and a strange grey creature a Martian emerges. Within a few minutes the Martians are on the rampage attacking people with rays of heat, which destroy everything in their path. When the Martians start moving towards London and the news spreads the population panics. Within days there are six million refugees fighting to escape London. Thousands of people are being killed by the Martians everyday and they are becoming stronger by the day. Just when things become very desperate the writer discovers that the Martians are being killed by the earth‟s germs. Against all odds the survivor is reunited with his wife and left to reflect on the huge influence the war had upon mankind. The novel has been related to invasion literature of the time. The novel has been variously interpreted as a commentary upon Evolutionary theory, British Imperialism and Victorian fears, superstition and prejudices.

H.G. Wells “First Men on the Moon” 1901 was termed as fantastic by Wells himself. The novel narrates the story of a businessman and the narrator Mr. Bedford‟s, journey to the moon Mr. Cavor is the eccentric scientist and he and Mr Bedford discovered that the moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilization of insect like creatures they call “Selenites”. Selenites exist in thousand forms and carry out specific social function for which they have been brought up. Specialization sums up the core of Selenite society. Unfortunately Cavor reveals man‟s inclination towards war, the lunar leader and others are shocked by this information in Cavor‟s broadcast. Bedford assumes that this is the reason that Cavor has been prevented from further broadcasting to Earth. C.S. Lewis clearly stated that his science fiction books where both inspired by and written as an antithesis to those of H.G. Wells. He acknowledged that The First Men On

The Moon to be “the best of the sort (of science fiction) I have read….” (from a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green).

From the above narration we can understand that H.G. Wells pre occupations in all his works especially science fiction was the impact of the dizzy progress of science and technology. Time and again he proved to be the harbinger of inventions but at the same time he could fathom the implications of a given advance and the first to cheer its coming or forsee grim consequences. Very early in his career he started to call for a science of the future, a disciplined inquiry into the shape of things to come, that would enable mankind to gain control of its own destiny. No wonder that many of Wells‟ most devoted fan where scientists. Quite a few of them were personal friends and sometimes colleagues.

17.5     EXCERPT FROM THE TIME MACHINE (1895):

“I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch — into futurity.

“As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then, though I was still travelling with prodigious velocity, the blinking succession of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set. It simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines of a desolate beach grew visible.

“I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual twilight.

“The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind were stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of salt, pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now.

“Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and flittering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae, like carters’ whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it moved.

“As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a month between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.

“I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air that hurts one’s lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun, a little larger, a little duller, the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.

“So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth’s fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still unfrozen.

“I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little.

“Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness that was creeping over the day, and then I realized that an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was passing across the sun’s disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be the moon, but there is much to incline me to believe that what I really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to the earth.

“The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives, all that was over. As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.

“A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold that smote to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal, there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing, against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.

17.6 THE TIME MACHINE:

H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine as a social critique of Victorian England projected into the distant future. Wells was a socialist for most of his life with Communistic leanings. He considered Capitalism as the cause of all ills in the society. The Industrial Revolution of the 17th and 18th century was a result of the rapid progress in technology, education and capital. The Capitalists were leading a luxurious life due to the unbounded wealth they had earned because of the Industrial Revolution whereas small children, women and workers slaved long hours in abject conditions for meager wages in unhygienic and dingy conditions. Charles Dickens won sympathy for them by writing heartrending and sentimental novels whereas Wells chose to incorporate a number of scientific- both natural and social- ideas in his arguments against Capitalism.

Wells has often targeted the elitist branch of evolution, The Social Darwinism. Charles Dickens had argued that different environments encouraged the reproduction of those species whose varying traits best suited them to survive: their future generations would be in turn better suited for the new environment and so on. Social Darwinism developed by the British Philosopher Herbert Spencer, frequently misapplied this concept of “natural selection” to justify the 19th century divide between the rich and the poor. The phrase ‟survival of the fittest‟ coined by Herbert Spencer not Charles Darwin does not mean the surviving members of an environment are the „best‟ but merely the best fit for their specific environment. Social Darwinism ignored this idea and contended that the Social environment was much like the cut throat natural environment, and that those who succeeded were biologically destined to do so and to continue in their march to human perfection. Conversely those who failed were naturally inferior beings of humanity.

In The Time Machine Wells shows how far human evolution will go if capitalism continues unhampered, mankind will split into two demarcated species the ruling class (the Eloi in the novel) and the working class (the Morlocks). Moreover the advancement in civilization will not surely advance the species it will be quite the opposite. On the contrary the luxurious life styles of the Eloi have made them lazy and weak, since survival is not the question the Eloi have not become stronger infact they have regressed they have become the targets of the Morlocks. Wells by way of the Eloi wants to warn the ruling class or the Capitalists who believe they are striving towards perfection.

To counter the notion of evolution as perfection, Wells brings in the concept of entropy (from the second law of Thermodynamics). The principle of entropy states that systems tend towards disorder and loss of energy overtime. The embodiment of entropy is shown in the Eloi, they are lazy, feeble and grow fearful when the Morlocks are near them.

17.7 THE TIME MACHINE: THE PLOT

The Time Traveller tells his dinner guest that he had invented a Time Machine. He shows them a smaller prototype and he tells them that he can use it to travel through time and that time is simply the fourth dimension. He discloses that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person through time. He returns the following week haggard and limping and recounts his eight days of time travel. He becomes the new narrator.

The Time Traveller, whose name we never come to know, tests his device with a journey that takes him to AD 806,701 in the future. He lands with his machine in a garden where he sees a statue of the White Sphinx. Here he meets the Eloi, a society of small, elegant childlike adults. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings. They talk in a strange tongue; they do not work and have a frugivorous diet. The Time Traveller tries to learn the language of the Eloi, but they soon lose interest in teaching him. He marvels at their laziness and lack of curiosity. He concludes that they are a peaceful, common society, the result of humanity conquering nature with technology and consequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival. He also believes that their population checks have been possibly too effective accounting for the conclusion was wrong. The full moon comes out and the Eloi go into buildings and the time traveler finds some place to sleep. However when he reaches the garden of the White Sphinx he finds his time machine missing. He eventually concludes that his machine had been dragged by some unknown party under the Sphinx. Luckily he had removed the levers of the machine before leaving it rendering it inoperable. Over the next couple of days and later in the dark he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Within their dwellings he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise possible. He alters his theory, speculating that the human race has evolved into two species: the less used classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, and the downtrodden working class has become the brutish light fearing Morlocks. Deducing that the Morlocks have taken his time machine he explores the Morlocks‟ tunnels and comes to know that due to lack of any sustenance they feed on the Eloi. His revised analysis is that their relationship is not of lords and servants, but of livestock and ranchers. The Time Traveller theorizes that intelligence is the result of and response to danger; with no real challenges facing the Eloi, they have lost the spirit, intelligence and physical fitness of humanity at its peak.

Meanwhile he saves an Eloi named Weena from drowning as no other Eloi seem to take any notice of her plight and they developed an innocently affectionate relationship in the course of several days. He takes Weena with him on an expedition to a distinct structure that turns out to the remains of a museum and is called th Palace of the Green Porcelain. He begins to understand why the Eloi fear the darkness, though he does not know what kind of „foul villainy‟ the Morlocks practice at night. He revises his hypothesis while the Eloi and Morlocks had once had a master servant relationship now the Morlocks are growing powerful and Eloi fear them.

Time Traveller decides to protect himself against the Morlocks. He starts despising them and sympathising with the lot of the Eloi. The Time Traveller decides to use a torch as a weapon against the Morlocks and use a „mace like weapon‟ to ram up the pedestal under the White Sphinx where he imagines the Time Machine is still kept. He also plans to bring Weena back to his own time. Because the long and tiring journey back to Weena‟s home is too much for, they stop in the forest and they are then overcome by the Morlocks in the night and Weena faints. The Time Traveller escapes only when a small fire he had left behind them to distract the Morlocks catches up to them as a forest fire: Weena is presumably lost in the fire, as are the pursuing Morlocks. The Morlocks open the Sphinx to use the Time Machine as bait to ensnare the Traveller. They do not realize that he would use it to escape. He reattaches the levers before he travels further ahead to roughly thirty million years from his own time. There he sees some of the last living things on a dying Earth, menacing reddish crab like creatures slowly wandering the blood-red beaches chasing enormous, huge butterflies in a world covered in simple lecherous vegetation. He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing Earth‟s rotation gradually cease and sun grow larger and dimmer and the world falling silent and freezing as the last degenerate living things die out.

The Time Traveller relates to the man his travel back to the present. The men imply that they do not believe in his story and soon leave. The original narrator thinks more about The Time Traveller‟s story unsure if it is true. He leaves,and the narrator realizes he has to meet someone soon. He asks the Time Traveller who promises he would prove it it was true within half an hour when he‟s done working on the machine. As he goes into the laboratory to tell the Time Traveller there is a gust of wind and some odd sounds, neither the Time Traveller nor the Time Machine is there. When a servant tells him he has not seen the Time Traveller the narrator understands that the Time Traveller has travelled into time again. Three years later, the Time Traveller has yet to return to the present. While the Time Traveller saw that mankind‟s progress turned outto be destructive, the narrator believes human civilization may still do some good as it matures. The narrator also chooses to view the future as largely unknown. He now owns two white flowers given to the Time Traveller by Weena-proof, he says that “even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still livid on in the heart of man”.

17.8 A SHORT ANALYSIS OF THE TIME MACHINE

The Time Machine has two main threads. The first is the adventure tale of the Eloi and Morlocks in the year 802,701 AD. The second is the science fiction of the time machine. The adventure story has the usual elements. The Time Travellers journey to the underworld, his fear of the great forest, and his relationship to Weena, mirror imagery prevalent in earlier literature, imagery strongly associated with the inner workings of the human psyche.

The political commentary of late Victorian England is reflected in the tale of 802,701. He strongly recommends that the capitalist should come out of their decadence or they would become like the Eloi, lazy, weak and unintelligent scared of the underground race of Morlocks. In the Eloi, Wells satirizes Victorian decadence. In the Morlocks, Wells provides a potentially Marxist critique of Capitalism.

The rest of the novel deals with the Science fiction of time travel. Before Wells, other people had written fantasies of time travel, but Wells was the first to bring a strong dose of scientific speculation to the genre. Wells Time Traveller speaks at length about time being the fourth dimension, and on the strange astronomy and evolutionary prints he observes as he travels through time. Much of this was inspired by ideas of entropy and decay propagated by Wells teacher Thomas Henry Huxley.

17.9 MAIN CHARACTERS IN THE TIME MACHINETHE TIME TRAVELLER

is the main protagonist of the novel and takes over as the narrator from Chapter 3 to chapter 12. He is a man of science, knowledgeable about contemporary theories about relativity and follows the scientific method of hypothesis, observation, experimentation and conclusion. He is fully aware that many for his early theories about the future would prove incorrect. An optimistic social Darwinist, he begins his time travel believing that civilization would continually advance but he quickly changes his thoughts once he comes across and observes the Morlocks and the Eloi. Weena is his only friend in the future with whom he has some romantic kind of relationships. Morlocks kill her and the Time Travellers deep sense of loathing is stoked by this act- it embodies the deep loathing of the lower class by the Victorians. Despite his understanding of the fact that the Morlocks are the victimized working class according to the Marxist terminology, he still despises them. Another irony in the novel is that the Time travel becomes a primal savage when he beats up the Morlocks.

Weena– is the only member of Eloi, the elitist class that the Time Traveller gets to know Weena embodies all the good and bad traits of upper class. They are not as advanced as Social Darwinists would like to believe. Their utopian civilization had made them physically and mentally weak, they are beautiful but lazy, frail and useless creatures who are incapable of doing anything for themselves. The Morlocks the nocturnal underground creatures, the members of the working class are now the true masters; Weena‟s behavior lets the Time Traveller figure about the relationship between the Eloi and the Morlocks.

THE MORLOCKS: Morlocks the ape like creatures, the evolved members of the working class, are the antagonists of the novel. The Time Traveller theorizes how the working class became distinct species apart from the ruling class due to the constant pushing them underground or exploiting them. Nocturnal and skilled at climbing, have turned the tables against their fairer upper world cousins the Eloi. They breed them for food while they keep their society humming. They stoke the Time Travellers loathing because he is a member of the Victorian upper class and he has a deep sense of disgust against the working class.

The Narrator and the Dinner Guests: The narrator does not intrude at all since he steps out of the story from Chapter 3 to chapter 12 yet he is an important part of the narrative. He is one member of the Time Travellers dinner group who is not skeptical of the story of the future. By the time the novel ends he not only believes the Time Travellers dystopian tale but is willing to over look the harsh prophecy of future and embrace the present and possibly change the future in the process. The narrator seems to stand in for the reader making them aware of what would befall mankind if it does not change. The dinner guest function basically as one character, The Medicine Man and the Psychologists are the scientific critic of his time travel theory. They also reflect the Victorian men of leisure who were able to gather for a leisurely discussion in the evenings. Their skepticism of the Time Traveller vision of the class divided future. They do not acknowledge the fact that they are slowly on their way to becoming the frail, stupid and useless Eloi surrounded by the suppressed working class which was turning into Morlocks. They are a foil to the narrator, who believes that a change in the present would benefit the future on the contrary the dinner guests are cynical and complacently go about their present business.

Reference

1. McDonald, John Q (1998-10-03). “Review of the Return of the Time Machine by EgonFriedell”.
2. McDonald, John Q. “Review of The Man Who Loved Morlocks by David Lake”.
3. Morlocks – Lexicanum
4. Stephenson, Neal (1999). “In the Beginning was the Command Line”.
5. Tolkien, J.R.R., Tree and Leaf, 2nd edition, Unwin Paperbacks
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8. Wolff, Larry (2003). Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press 
9. Brookes, Richard (1812). “The general gazetteer or compendious geographical dictionary”. F.C. and J. Rivington