Around the time that HG Wells wrote this book, there were a lot of new scientific breakthroughs that more than certainly influenced him. And at the time, the only other real science fiction novel was 20,000 leagues under the sea (Jules Verne). However as Wells studied science at university, he was up to date with all of the newest breakthroughs such as T.H Huxley’s Theory of Biogenesis (1870), and one of his main influences was Charles Darwin’s The Descendant of Man (1871). The Descendant of man features a heavy role in this novel, suggesting that man will evolve further, into separate races almost as the sophisticated humans evolve into a totally lazy, dependant, frail creatures, where as the working class evolve into a more ape like, muscular, independent creature. At the age of 20 Wells worked as a teacher at Holt Academy in Wrexham which would have widened his ideas and ways to express his ideas. After that, a year later, after illness Wells decided to return to London to continue teaching and he published The Chronic Argonauts in the Science schools Journal. He also received a B.Sci degree in 1890. Another influence on HG Wells I feel would have been the Electric Light which was devised by T.A Edison and J.W Swan.
Wells used lots of Description when the time traveller was travelling through time, as to keep the reader interested. And also to set the scene and experience, for example: ‘The night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came to-morrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and even fainter. To-morrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and faster still. An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind’.
The previous statement showed that he used many expressions (‘the night came like the turning out of a lamp’), to make you understand, as if you were turning out a lamp on your bedside table, this was how the night came. He uses this descriptive language excellently to describe the ‘beautiful graceful creature but indescribably frail’ Eloi or the ‘small, white moving creature, with large bright eyes’ Morlocks. His Descriptions are deep and very well spoken, using lots of descriptions about the surroundings, the creatures, the vegetation, the sky as well as the main focus of the part of the novel.
In the time traveller’s expedition, he first encounters the Eloi, these are the sophisticated, upper class descendants of the humans, they have hardly any independence and spend all of their time picking flowers, making love and playing, they bare almost, child like properties. He describes them as; ‘a slight creature - perhaps four feet high - clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt. Sandals or Buskins – I could not clearly distinguish which – were on his feet’. This shows that they were simply dressed in elegant clothing, which, has gone ‘backwards’ from what we wear now. From our coats and shoes and protective clothing, to their simple tunics, sandals and belts. They live in great big halls with huge doorways, with metal flooring and huge stone tables. They all stay in one room and are strict vegetarians. The Time Traveller thinks that the Eloi are the upper-class representation of today’s humans, but because of the effects of capitalism, they have lost the ability to be self sufficient. I think that this was the secret warning from Wells that capitalism is taking away the upper-class peoples independence and that if we do not start doing our own work, we may become like this in the future.
The second encounter that the time traveller comes across are the small, white furred and big red eyed ape like creatures called The Morlocks. ‘At once the eyes darted sideways and something white run past me. I turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer little ape-like figure, its head down in a particular manner, running across the sunlit space behind me’. This is The Time Travellers first impressions of the Morlocks, He later finds out that they live underground, in pitch black caverns, which could be accessed through wells in the landscape, these creatures, were also found to be scared of light, artificial and natural. To The Time Travellers horror, he later finds that these creatures are also carnivorous and eat the frail, nimble Eloi, which more often than not, cannot defend themselves. These in today’s society, would be the working class grunts, that have evolved into hideous monsters, which have a fear of the light where they have been underground or under shadowed, by the more civilised Eloi. This supports my theory of the hidden warning about Capitalism.
To some extent, I do find HG Wells’ The Time Traveller quite convincing, mainly because of the effects of capitalism theory. I believe that this may already be starting to be shown now, this is because, you have the working class (as in manual labour) separated from the upper class, business suited people. The working class are put into trading estates or industrial estates, where as the upper class are in the offices and schools etc…
Where as on the other hand, I feel that man has evolved as far as it can, we have all of the requirements needed to survive independently and should still either stop or slow the capitalism trade.
