The Sphinx has always represented a sort of riddle and the Time Traveller notices tracks of where his Machine has been dragged into the hollow beneath the stone monster and at this point he isn’t sure whether it is the Eloi that have moved it or others. He does doubt though that the Eloi would have removed the Time Machine because of their ‘physical and intellectual inadequacy’. So he suddenly begins to think that there is another form of life here in the world which at that point he is incapable of escaping from. He then has his first encounter with the Morlock, which had been spying upon him, and he scares it off mistaking it for a white deer.
Later he arrives at the Eloi’s sleeping quarters, which consists of one of the wrecked abandoned buildings.‘The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimensions.’‘The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through, and it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather-worn.’ It is obvious to see form these descriptions that the past can be seen in these now derelict and worn out constructions from many years before and that the Eloi use them only as eating and sleeping quarters. The Time Traveller cries out to them in distress of losing his invention and asks if they have taken it. The Eloi are exceptionally afraid of the dark because of being the time of the day when the Morlocks snatch them from their beds to be eaten, the Morlocks having evolved to be nocturnal creatures. During the night he again meets more of the Morlocks in the dark however they are still weary of him and don’t dare to yet try to hurt him.
With the Time Machine gone, there is now an element of detective work surrounding the mystery of where the invention has disappeared to and the way that the Time Traveller will get it back. ‘Still I must be calm and patient, find its hiding place, and recover it by force or cunning’. This sentence shows the way that the inventor decides to overlook his problem. ‘I made a careful examination of the ground about the little lawn’ and so by using this detective element as a plot to make the story more interesting the real meaning of the book can be overlooked and ignored if not understood properly. To involve the reader within the story, H.G.Wells uses pathetic fallacy such as when the scientist has that great feeling of loss and desperateness which we have all been through and all know what it feels like.
The Eloi are a simple race where each of them is equal. They speak in a simple language, eat simple food, wear simple clothes and live simple lives. They are lazy people, acting like little incapable children and have evolved from the upper class of the eighteen hundreds which is the Time Travellers own time. In Hebrew the word Eloi means ‘My God’ and seeing that the world that they are surrounded by is completely unbiblical and unwritten alike Darwin’s theory, the Eloi are seen as incapable of any sort of control and dominance so in a way God has lost his authority. The Morlocks are the lower class, which took refuge underground becoming nocturnal, and when exposed to the light become dazed. Whereas the Eloi have lost all interest in learning new methods or questioning others, the Morlocks have excelled in the manufacture of machines and are now the keepers of the Eloi. The Eloi are bred by the Morlocks, reared from birth and fed and clothed till death which for the Eloi comes at the mid stage of their lives. The only reason that the race of the Eloi hasn’t died out is due to the Morlocks needing a source of food and that comes from cannibalism. The two races are separated by the day and the night as for comfort the Eloi sleep together in the dark, the time that the Morlocks appear due to their hating of the light. Although the Eloi and Morlocks could be considered as different races now, they have infact evolved from human beings and rather than the upper class Eloi being in charge it is now the lower class Morlocks which have taken control. And it is these white ape looking creatures that have stolen the Time Travellers machine in order to set a trap so that they can capture him.
The idea that the class difference during the nineteenth century has got to such a large extent that it is incapable of being bridged and that one society will be formed of equal beings rather than two separate ones. Wells is trying to express his feelings about the class differences within this book and has reversed the roles of the Eloi and Morlocks in order to show what he believe would have happened had society not become more equal in its rites and privileges. He also implies that the survival of the fittest was always inevitable and this is proven in the way that the Morlocks are slowly growing in numbers whilst the Eloi die. The Time Traveller describes the Morlocks footprints as sloth like, a tree bearing animal and Darwin’s theories of humans coming from monkeys are shown through at this point. More detective work comes into place when he comes across the deep wells that hold beneath them the Morlocks living space and machines. He realises that the Morlocks are cannibals after descending one of these shafts to find human remnants.
The Time Travellers theories upon how the Eloi and Morlocks managed to evolve from the same tend to be quite inaccurate due to his excessive assumptions. He originally believes that the world he has landed himself in is a land rich with Communism and that everybody is of equal rights and to be fair he is correct to a certain degree although he hasn’t found out about the Morlocks yet. He comes to the conclusion that there is no social or economical struggle and that every Eloi was free to do what he or she liked but again he isn’t taking in all the facts including those about the Morlocks. The last two and a half sides of Chapter 5 talk about the Socialism of the Earth in the year 802,701 and H.G.Wells shows us that the story hasn’t been written for the entertainment of the readers but as a political thesis. And then suddenly as the Time Traveller strikes a match at the end of the chapter, being one of the most simple things in our world today we are suddenly taken back to seeing how inadequate the Eloi really are.
The role of Weena in ‘The Time Machine’ is to act as a comfort and look out for the Time Traveller. When he is all alone and down in the dumps she comes along as the only Eloi to be even slightly inquisitive and curious of the man. This pleases him and even more so later in the book as he realises just how uninteresting and similar the Eloi are bar Weena. Their playing in the sun, swimming in the river and half playful love making gives him great distress as he believes that they do not actually gain anything from it. When Weena is kidnapped during the night by the Morlocks, suddenly the Time Traveller decides to burst into action and comes down upon the ugly nocturnal creatures like a hammer. Although he finds Weena gone and eaten, he in a vein attempt manages to rescue the Time Machine and go forward in time. All the way until when the sun is dead and only a desolate pool and beach are left standing and this reminds us of exactly how Charles Darwin describes the start of the evolution of man.
The way the book is set out in twelve chapters made me believe that Wells had done this for a purpose because there are twelve months in a year and twelve hours in a day, both associated with time and this helps us to accept what I see as the forth dimension.
