“I stood up and looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy downpour. But all else of the world was invisible. My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx...It chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile on the lips,”
The Time Traveler recollected his whole story in vivid detail, this detail, the first thing he saw when he reached the future, being no exception. Wanting more than anything to witness the fantastic, advanced world of tomorrow, the Time Traveler builds himself a Time Machine. After some consultation with his fellows, he rides the Machine forward in time, to the year 802,701 A.D. Once there, he realizes that his perception of what the future would be like is very wrong. Discovering this, the Traveler attempts to return home. Attempting this, he discovers a worse discovery: the Machine has disappeared. Venturing to reclaim it, from whom he does not discover til later, the Traveler explores the future and draws conclusions about what has yet to happen. H.G. Wells’ Time Machine enveloped me in a mind boggling report of what the future may be like in the form of a fantastic science fiction story.
The Morlocks and the Eloi, the underground monsters and the aboveground dwelling folk respectfully, are the results of several thousand years of the separation of classes: the Eloi representing the capitalists, the money holders, the ones in power and the Morlocks being the equivalent to the common people, the workers, forced to live with the machines they worked underground (contrary to the comparisons, it is actually the Morlocks who are in power, control (meaning that the potential revolt that is sure to come when a people are supressed must have already happened when the Traveler appeared)). The hopelessness of both existing illustrates Wells’ point very well, which is that an equal government, such as communism, is ideal if society and humanity are to prevail and defeat the natural decay that time causes.
Other than the people in the present, which is, of course, now the past (such as the Psychologist and the Provincial Mayor), and the Time Traveler himself, the characters that inhabit this world are not portrayed as people. Instead, they are portrayed as animals with somewhat high intelligence, considering the fact that they are animals. Weena, for example, is not perceived by the Traveler to be a human companion, but as a favored pet. Because the Morlocks and the Eloi never say anything, other than the short, choppy sentences that compose the remnants of any kind of language, spoken by the Eloi and the sinister sounding mutterings of the Morlocks, the idea that they are people is even more absurd and harder to prove.
The Time Machine can be read by almost anybody (some of the terms used in the book require a broader vocabulary to be understood/known) and should be read by the capable. Even though many countries are democratic and only a few are communists/socialists/etc., and one of the author’s points clashes with democratic-like governments, this short story is well worth the time it takes to read.
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