Wells uses a specific choice of language to first describe the Time Traveller, like “dirty”, his hair is “disordered” which suggests he has been through an “intense suffering” to indicate the terror of the story he will tell. This technique tantalises the reader’s interest.
Wells uses many different techniques to show the reality of the Time Travellers journey. He uses repetition, “faster and faster still”, comers “Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity” and short phrases “like a rocket”. These phrases help prove the intensity of the journey he is taking.
The initial view of the future is somewhat misleading to the Time Traveller as all the Time Traveller could see was a “little lawn in a garden”. Which suggests paradise, which we later learn is not the case. However, after a while the Traveller comes in contact with the Eloi. The Time Travellers first view of the Eloi was “a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably frail”. This is because Wells vision of the future for middle-class citizens, like himself, is the Eloi. However we learn that the Time Traveller feels more at ease with the Eloi, as they are “pretty people”, like “china”. This is as Well’s key idea during the novel is that the Eloi are vulnerable, weak and fragile creatures as they have nothing left to strive for as their food, cloths and livelihood are provided for them, “These Eloi were mere fatted cattle”.
The Traveller is disheartened by the Eloi’s lack of intelligence and sophistication as, “I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in… everything”. Wells is using this vision of the Eloi being unintelligent to show us what the thinks the world will be like for the middle-class, which is a life in which they are weak and have a lack of knowledge because everything is provided for them by the Morlocks.
Wells shows us examples of what the world will be like by using recognisable locations like “masses of aluminium” and “nettles”. However he is in a very different world “no small houses to be seen”. Wells uses this vision to show he is not a believer of his current class system because of the hardships the working class face. This is proved as the palace like buildings suggest “communism”, which would suggest the current class system has been destroyed.
Wells then makes clear that the world have evolved into a perfect existence, “no hedges, no signs of property rights… the whole earth had become a garden”. However this is not the case, Wells is showing us that this is not the case as the social differences do still exist but are in reverse to those of his own time. Wells however is trying to prove that there is nothing left to strive for as, “strength is the outcome of need” and the Eloi have no interest or needs as they do not work or explore into new theories and ideas. Wells shows the Eloi and Morlocks have destroyed the need intelligence and strength because the two communities both have a monotonous life, which will all end up in the same way, death. This is the point of reversal of the evolutionary process Wells is trying to get across to the people of his time.
Wells uses the Morlocks to disagree with Darwin, who believed in evolution, which was that each generation would have a better life. This is also called reverse metamorphosis that man will recede to evolve from animal form.
The Morlocks are described as “A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight”. Wells is using these creatures to show, “it was like a human spider”, one of the most frightening aspects of the novel. However he believes the Morlocks were the workers for the superior race, Eloi. However he soon discovers how wrong he is.
The readers lean that eventually the Eloi will be extinct as they are so weak they cannot survive the attacks of the Morlocks, “the nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace”. Wells uses this vision to warn the people of his time that the working class will eventually rise up against the government and higher class because their working and living are so poor because of their lack of money.
Wells summaries this horrific vision of society by grieving how brief the dream of human intellect had been, “It had committed suicide”. Wells warns that the pursuit of a life of comfort and ease will eventually result in the loss of all “intellectually versatility”. The Eloi became a vulnerable and powerless race that will ultimately become extinct. Whereas the Morlocks in their struggle to stay alive increase their strength and resourcefulness, but like the Eloi will eventually die out.
Wells concludes the novel by having his Time Traveller travel several million years into the future, in which no recognisable human life exists, only a “monstrous crab-like creature”, only an image of the first forms of life on the planet. As the Traveller keeps travelling in this vision he eventually finds “green slime on rocks”. Eventually he sees the dying out of the sun, leaving him in “great darkness” in a cold that “smote” him to the “marrow”. Wells uses this pessimistic view of the future to make a more powerful point in the novel.
For conclusion, I believe H.G Wells uses the medium of Science Fiction to comment upon the social conditions of his time using the Eloi, the underground middle-class community, and the Morlocks, the over ground working-class community well. As he does have strong point of view but they do come across and would warn people of his time of the consequences they are having now and in the future in millions of years.
