The Time Machine By H. G. Wells Analysis

H. G. Wells is a visionary of his time, and even though his works are considered science fiction you can find within his writings how he addresses his fears for society. Wells expresses his thoughts while living in England at the end of the Victorian age, a time that has eagerly engaged in the industrial revolution, seen an increased population, followed a royal prince who leads the stories in the tabloids and was exposed to the published writings of his peers like Max Nordan, Degeneration. (Norton Literature) Wells uses the concerns and happenings of his environment to express his own on apprehensions for society in his novella The Time Machine where he shows that degeneration to the point of extinction. Degeneration is a lowering of effective …show more content…
The Time Traveller is surrounded by rhododendron bushes, is it odd that Well surrounds the Time Traveller with a poisonous plant, this can be seen as an effective statement that he landed in a degenerated zone. But then Wells gives the reader a spot of hope because next the Traveller see the silver birch tree touching the shoulder of the white marble figure, the birch tree is one of the most familiar trees in the British countryside and it was a colonized at the end of the Ice Age, besides being an excellent material for fire is this a tell for the British people that they can withstand time? (Arkive) Next is the arrival of flowers or actually a lei did Wells take a Hawaiian tradition and add it to the Eloi’s hospitality to the Time Traveller, yet they were all new flowers and delicate. These flowers seem to represent the Eloi but the vegetation of the land represent the degeneration of a society “a tangle waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long neglected and yet weedless garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps across the spread of the waxen petals.” (Wells 21-22) Wells use of ying and yang description show the lost responsibility of the land but the possibility of strength to endure. As Wells moves the Time Traveller about the area he shows how the …show more content…
Those two attributes alone denote a level of evil, being underground and moving in the shadows of darkness, in a movie this would be where the ominous music would start. Then Wells gives the Morlocks even more negative or degenerate attributes in the description of them, dull, strange, human spider, and bleached, these descriptions were used even before the Time Traveller venture to their lair by way of the round well. Why did the remarks from the Time Traveller distressed the Eloi, did they understand that they were no longer the alpha? The Time Traveller theory was “The too-perfect security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general swindling in size, strength, and intelligence.” (Wells 42) But what of the Morlocks did these creatures have more strength, intelligence or manners, did they work and communicate on a variety of subjects, how did they arrange their dinner parties? “The place, by the by, was very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly-shed blood was in the air. Some way down the central vista was a little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous!” since they had their meal laid out on a table and ate meat, would the Time Traveller prefer to dine with the Morlocks? (Wells 46) Wells did not develop the Morlocks to be new