Future Vision
"Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man,
had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time
Necessity had come home to him"' . . ." (52).
Points for Reflection
H. G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895)
- the narrator notes the difficulty of his capturing in words the special quality of the Time Traveller's narrative. He complains that we, the readers, "cannot see the speaker's white, sincere face . . . nor hear the intonation of his voice" (15). Despite these drawbacks, does Wells--speaking through the narrator--transmit the story in vivid enough detail for our imaginations to generate a clear picture of what is described, or does he fail?
- does the Time Traveller find any of his expectations about the future realized? Has cruelty "grown into a common passion" and humankind become "unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful" (18-19)? Are those beings he converses with advanced in "knowledge, art, everything (21)?
- what variables does the Time Traveller believe must be present for humanity to improve itself? Is he accurate?
- humankind's mental gymnastics and scientific prowess have landed the time traveler in "the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised" (33). Do his powers of reason provide ample tools for getting him out of this situation?
- after a time, the time traveler begins employing some of Darwin's ideas. Do these ideas gain credence throughout the tale, or are they ultimately rejected as irrelevant?
- what factor, ultimately, matters more to the time traveler in determining with whom his sympathies will lie—the varying qualities of mind he finds in the inhabitants of the future, or their physical qualities?
- how powerful is Wells’ imagination, and how accurate his ability to look into the future? Does he base the future only on ideas, materials, and objects with which he is already familiar, or does he successfully dream up things for which there was no antecedent in his own time period?
- does this novel celebrate the accomplishments of humankind?
- in his approach to solving problems and facing crises, is the time traveler more like a Morlock than an Eloi?
- what does this novel suggest about the reliability of human perception? About the relative solidity or malleability of human memory?
detail from The Gateway to the Great Temple at Baalbek (1841)
David Roberts, RA
Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu
