Title: The Time Machine
Author: H.G. Wells
Genre: Classics, Science Fiction, Time Travel
First published: 1895
Finished reading: May 17th 2016
Pages: 104
“We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow. With out them we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence. ”
I normally seem to be having a love/hate relationship when it comes to classics, but since I have been wanting to read The Time Machine for a while now and I needed more classics for a challenge I decided to give it a go anyway. This story set in the year 802.701 AD is without doubt a quick read and and has an interesting vision of the future, especially when you keep in mind the story was written in the 19th century. Still, I’m having mixed feelings about this time travel story. I felt the story was a bit too ‘communist’ to my taste. Why? It almost seemed like H.G. Wells was promoting communism by showing that the seemingly rich and priviledged Eloi are actually quite weak and the ‘lower’ Morlocks are more technically advanced because of the simple need to adapt to a complicated situation. The quote above shows this quite well… I’m not saying the political theme is necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn’t what I expected and I’m still not sure what to think of it. And I didn’t enjoy the descriptions of the part where he travels towards the final moments of the Earth as much as his first time travel adventure either. Still, I can’t deny the story in general reads fast and is quite entertaining if you can get past the political theme. The descriptions of this future are without doubt interesting!
A Victorian scientist calls himself the Time Traveller as he tries to convince his friends that he was finally able to build a working time machine. They all seem a bit skeptic and don’t believe him, until the day that his time machine vanishes from sight. It seems like time travelling is indeed possible! He takes himself to the year 802.701 AD, and soon finds out life is completely different then. The Time Traveller has a hard time communicating with the inhabitants of this strange future, but he is happy to see that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment and peace. But soon enough he starts to discover that the Eloi people are not as advanced as they might seem and are in fact quite weak. The Eloi are afraid of the dark, and with reason, because beneath their paradise live the Morlocks hidden in the deep tunnels. They have evolved in order to survive under the complicated circumstances in the tunnel, and now hunt the very people that used to control them…
While I liked the general descriptions of The Time Machine and it was interesting to read a vision of the future that was written over one hundred years ago, I still have mixed thoughts about this read. The main problem I had involves the political theme, which I thought distracted the attention from an otherwise entertaining sci-fi time travel story. I won’t be saying this classic is a must read, but it is an interesting enough read if you like these kind of stories and quite short as well.
I’m mixed about this book too. I think I would have liked a much longer story, more in-depth about the struggle between the two halves.
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Ah yes, reading more about the struggle between the Eloi and Morlocks would definitely make the story more interesting… Or at least a more detailed history of how they evolved over time and ended up in the current situation.
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Yeah, and maybe the character being a little more complex and actually having names. 😀
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I completely agree!
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It’s a story I like very much (though not the screen interpretations). I was very interested in the political message you got from the novel. Rather, I’ve always seen it as much an anthropological message – a commentary on evolution.
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Part of it can definitely be seen as anthropological, but I interpreted the underlying message in a different way as well. While the Eloi initially seemed to be the more powerful race and had control over the Morlocks (communism), the Morlocks were able to grow stronger using a ‘communist’ system and ended up being better of. I guess this can be interpreted in different ways, but I also felt it was a criticism on capitalism and the Industrial revolution; saying that those who seem priviledged initially will end up weaker than those who have to fight to survive and work together to improve their situation.
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I didn’t even notice the political message that you mentioned
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I guess the story can be interpreted in many ways… Which is the great thing about books in the first place. 😉
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