The start of the book is very like the setting in a fairytale story as it begins in normal time then ( once upon a time, is a classic start to all fairytale stories) moves to the traveller’s time, which is a fictional time. The book becomes a fairytale setting when the time travelling starts travelling. The setting of the Eloi and the Morlocks is part fairytale as there are very big flowers that measure several feet high which are very unrealistic but on the other hand there are features from the past such as museums and ruins. The description of the setting in the future i.e. year 802701 A.D. is fairytale like, because in the book it says there are monsters and that Mercury passes the earth as the time traveller quoted:
“What I really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to the earth”.
At the start of the book the time traveller tells his friends about his idea to invent a time machine. The medicine man responds with “It sounds plausible enough tonight”. Then the time traveller leads the way to the time machine. The medicine man still thinks the time traveller is not serious as he quotes “are you serious?”
When the time traveller starts to travel the day kept continuously going day, night, day, night. He started to get confused and doubtful on the success of the trip as he quoted
“I can not convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. They are excessively unpleasant”.
Further through travelling time, the time traveller was not on the saddle properly so he could not see what he was doing. When the time traveller stopped the time machine the sky was no longer blue. The north-eastward sky was inky black and out of the blackness shown pale white stars.
“In another moment the pale stars alone were visible all else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.”
On the third day of his arrival to 802 701 A.D the time traveller made a rescue of an Eloi who was in trouble in the river. The time traveller became a special friend with the Eloi who he rescued and she was a girl called Weena.
On the fourth day the traveller was seeking shelter from the heat in an old ruin where he came across the piercing eyes of a Morlock , the Morlock reacted by going towards a shaft but the traveller lit a match that highlighted a person who looked like a human spider. The time traveller concluded that Man had changed to two species in the future, they were the Eloi and the Morlocks.
Weena would not discuss the Morlocks with the time traveller and in fact started to cry when the Morlocks were mentioned. The time traveller although scared decided that he was going to go look underground via the shaft that the Morlock had went down as he was convinced that the Morlocks also had his travelling time machine.
Weena went with the traveller to the shaft but she stayed at the top in the daylight and did not enter. The time traveller arrived at the bottom of the shaft where the sound of machinery got louder and tried unsuccessfully to communicate with the Morlocks who were touching his face (page 68) but they did not speak like the Eloi’s .He entered a vast arched cavern and struck a match to give him light where he saw a table set with a meal of a large red joint of meat. The traveller wished as he had thought to bring a Kodak camera so that he could take pictures of the underworld, so he could study the subterranean land at his leisure .The traveller suddenly realised that he had only 4 matches left and was feeling frightened as the Morlocks grabbed and breathed over him. The traveller used the remaining matches to scare off the Morlocks giving him just enough time to make his escape back up the shaft to daylight and Weena.
The traveller was determined that he would try to find arms and a secure place that would protect him and Weena against the nightmare of darkness and not group together with fear as the Eloi do. The traveller remembered the Palace of Green Porcelain as a good shelter and he and Weena had eventually arrived at the Palace after spending a night on a hill part of the way when the sun had began to set.
The Palace was like an old museum with lots of interesting items but as Weena came closer to the traveller he suddenly realised that daylight had disappeared and that he could see from footprints in the dust that there was a presence of Morlocks. The traveller had no arms and he quickly broke a lever to use as a mace which could kill Morlocks. On his way out the traveller went through the Chemistry part of the palace and found a box of matches and camphor which can be used as a candle. The Palace was not secure enough and Weena and the traveller tried to make it back to the point that the traveller’s time machine had landed (White Sphinx) but tiredness and a lack of sleep caught up with Weena and the traveller decided to take shortcut through the forest. The traveller lit firewood to repel some of the Morlocks and he and Weena carried on through the forest where they met more Morlocks, they were frightened off by lighting the camphor and throwing it at them. Weena fainted and the traveller did not know which way to go so he decided to light a fire in the middle of the forest, Weena could not be revived and she lay as if dead. The heat from the fire made the traveller sleepy and he fell asleep eventually he woke up to find the fire out and that he was getting overpowered by the Morlocks. The traveller managed to use his mace to fight off some the Morlocks and helped by the first fire that he started a lot of the Morlocks started die as they got caught up in the fire. The traveller was saved but Weena had been lost to the undergrounders during the fighting and probably was left somewhere in the forest and probably not eaten before the fire had killed the Morlocks (page 98).
The language used in the Time Machine also has an element of fairytale as some of the words and phrases are child like or easy reading and used unnecessarily used in sentences for instance when the time traveller said;
“I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling”.
The time traveller also described the days passing as “The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast for me” so quite a childlike view.
When the time traveller met the Eloi they had a way of greeting the time traveller describes ” they past each other flowers” this is just like a childlike way to act.
The Time Machine also uses scientific language for instance the words and literature that the characters use “I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly on inch too short as I went on, still gaining velocity. The language was very intellectual such as “almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs”.
The Time Machine is not a traditional child’s fairy tale story but more of adult fairy tale stories because of the child like sentences and the unnecessarily placement of words such as when the time traveller is saying something he relates words to are totally irrelevant to the sentences. There is another way that the story is written and that is using scientific and intellectual words for instance the time traveller said
“I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one inch too short as I went on, still gaining velocity” so this type of language would be to hard for children to understand and relate to.
Overall I think the time machine is a classic story which has led to a large
Sci-fi industry.
The story also uses lots of ideas from the traditional fairy tale stories but uses sci-fi information to make it a unique for an adult audience story in the pre 1914’s.
