The
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Machine, written by H.G. Wells in 1895, is a clever dystopian vision with a twist. The
novel begins with the time
traveller demonstrating a model of his machine to a group of sceptical friends, the narrator of the novel included. The story then moves forward a week to find the narrator, two of the guests from the previous week, and some others, sitting down to dinner in the time traveller’s house. The meal is interrupted by the sudden appearance of the bloodied and dishevelled host, who has emerged into the dining-room from his laboratory. The remainder of the novel is the time traveller’s account of his voyage to the year 802,701 in his time machine.
On arriving in the future, the time traveller encounters a race of small human beings, known as the Eloi, living what, at first glance, appears to be an idyllic existence. Theirs is a pastoral
world where work and strife are unknown and days are spent in playing, eating, love-making and sleep. There are disconcerting elements to this world, however. Why are all the building decayed? Why are the Eloi terrified of the dark and what lurks underground? A journey under the earth finds the traveller confronted by the Morlocks, a carnivorous race of humanoids who prey on the Eloi. Without anyone to explain the situation to him, we follow the traveller as he tries to make sense of the society he finds himself in.
The traveller concludes that mankind must have reached point in its evolution where there was no more struggle. The upper classes then fell into a kind of bovine contentment which dulled their intellectual faculties and led to a regression to a childlike state. The
working class, the Morlocks, became accustomed to their toil and their subterranean existence. All was well until the Morlocks ran out of animals to eat. Thus, they now breed, and care for, the Eloi as a farmer does his cattle.
The Time Traveller is a simple story, well told. Here lies no deep, philosophical discussion. In creating the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks, H.G. Wells has extrapolated on the class divisions which were prevalent at the time (and this was an era much concerned with the appalling living conditions of the working class). More to the point he makes, as his central premise, the argument that man needs struggle, change and challenges in order to keep, and to develop, his intellectual gifts. Once perfectly adapted to our environment, there will be little to differentiate us from the contented, cud chewing cattle in the fields.