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An essay on The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and How it Relates to Our World Today

In H.G. Well’s famous science fiction novel The Time Machine, the time, place, and circumstance can be interpreted to warn against several things occurring in the world today. With the Time-Traveler as his advocate, Wells tries to tell his readers about the instability of seemingly utopic capitalist societies, the danger in advancing too much too fast, and how innovation is more important than uniformity. These three things are commented upon over and over again throughout the duration of the book.

The first thing Wells comments on is instability, not only in the case of the weak and futile Elois, but instability in general. On the very first page is seen this sentence, “But wait… can an instantaneous cube exist? ...any real body must have extension in…duration.” An object that doesn’t last for any length time cannot be, and the seemingly perfect world of the Elois is an example of this instability. The utopia that these frail and beautiful people live in is but an illusion, because it doesn’t exist. The Elois are “brave enough by day,” but hunker down in the large palace after dark, in fear of the Morlocks who prey upon them. Hundreds of years before the Time-Traveler’s journey, this hyperbolic capitalist society may have reached a perfect balance- the aristocrats being ideal aristocrats and the workers being flawless workers. Shortly after this equilibrium, however, the masters regress to lazy flower vases only good for looking at, and the workers are forced to such a state that they attempt what was before forbidden- overriding and even eating their superiors- and find it much easier than having to grovel for food elsewhere. Gradually, the two castes separate completely, and as the principal of entropy (systems tend toward disorder and loss of energy over time) mentioned at the beginning of the book predicted, this superficial stability could not and did not last. While all the capitalist countries today (i.e., USA, England) try to not be too rigid in their social systems, this separation between the upper and lower classes may one day become a serious issue. If things get to that point (though perhaps not as exaggerated and inhumane as The Time Machine suggests), a feeling of distinct unease and mistrust between the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy will forever be a roadblock in the global vision of an egalitarian tomorrow.

Secondly, Wells is warning people against the evils of too rapid development. He depicts the latter years of the planetary evolution as being filled with a “remote and awful twilight” and an “eternal sunset” looming over the horizon, the only animal life being a black ball of slime with writhing tentacles. Somehow, after reading the entire book, the reader gets an idea that this is at least partially the fault of such rapid progression in the millennia before. It can be thought of like this: if fire was discovered in the morning, language was developed by 9:00 AM; the Renaissance happened before lunch, airplanes were buzzing around by 3:30 PM, and everyone had a Mac at dinner, the whole history of human development would be over in a day. In The Time Machine, the brief utopia of the capitalist society had eliminated the need for further development. When the Time-Traveler’s invention took him into futurity, he found himself intellectually superior to those of the Golden Age, for all forward progressing had long since coming to an end, and technology is no more. Ironically, however, the intelligent Traveler is forced to return to primitiveness, like breaking complex machinery for an iron bar. Only with the help of this makeshift weapon is he able to successfully retrieve the Time Machine and go back to his own Victorian England- later, at the very end, he sets out again with many modern contraptions like cameras and guns but fails to return again. Would he have fared better without all the fancy technology? Perhaps not, in real life, but maybe the author would’ve taken pity upon him in the book and let him return to the waiting Present.

Lastly, Wells comments on how simply following others isn’t going to get anyone anywhere. Wells was never one for following the status quo (he was born in a poor family and quit school at fourteen, but managed to become a world-famous writer), and in most of his novels, the protagonist had to isolate him/herself from the rest of society in order to achieve something of scientific value. In The Time Machine, the Time-Traveler is separated from the rest of society; originally named of Moses Nebogipfel, an allegory made from Moses, the prophet who led the Israelites from Egypt; Nebo, the mountain from which said prophet first saw the Promised Land, and gipfel, German for mountaintop, he is a “prophet” for science. He is a true anachronism in the sense that he’s “a man thinking the thoughts of a wiser age, doing things and believing things that men now cannot understand… [His] age was still to come.” He is set apart from the crowd by his vision and intelligence. This intellect drives him with an irresistible urge to build a time machine and traverse the fourth dimension of time; after building the time machine, however, like all who can see the future, he loses interest in the advancement of mankind and claims it “a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon…its makers.” In spite of this negative statement, he travels to the future and the trip unsurprisingly alters his opinion of things: “if [the quote above] is so, it remains for us to live as though it was not so.” Later, after Hillyer, the narrator, talks to him, he embarks upon his second journey and is never seen again; his exploits into futurity has finally set him completely apart from the mundane world of Victorian England, and has finally achieved the goal of convincing people- Hillyer and his butler, at least- that time traveling really was possible. He has, in a way, sacrificed himself for science. This would not have happened if he didn’t dare to speak up against the popular beliefs mindless politicians and doctors of his time entertained.

In conclusion, H.G. Wells spent many years of his life promoting his visions, warning that the future contained either “knowledge or extinction.” The Time Machine is no exception; it carries Wells’s ideas throughout the duration of book. Faith in humanity is never lost, however; in the epilogue of The Time Machine, the narrator Hillyer says that “… to me, the future is… black and dark- a vast ignorance, lit by… the memories of [the Time-Traveler’s] story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange and white flowers… to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.”