Included in the style that H.G Wells uses is his narrative technique, which is that of the double first person narrator. At the beginning of the novel, the unknown “I” character tells the story but then in chapters three to fifteen, the Time Traveller tells the story and then in chapter sixteen and the Epilogue, the unknown “I” character again narrates the story.
There are four main characters in the Novel and many minor characters. The minor characters do not need explaining but the main characters do. These main characters are The Time Traveller, Weena, The Eloi and The Morlocks.
When The Time Traveller first arrives in the new future world he is astonished to see many things, which would in fact, be a Victorian person’s nightmare.
He came across two races. One was called The Eloi, the other The Morlocks. Out of the two races, The Eloi were the aristocrats and the Morlocks were the working class of the two of the races. The Morlocks ate the Eloi, which horrified The Time Traveller because a Victorian person could take that as an example that in the future world we have gone back to Cannibalism. The Morlocks lived underground. We know this because of this quote from H.G Wells, “Plainly, this second species of man was subterranean.” There is also a quote to conclude the lives of the Eloi and The Morlocks as the workers and the upper class, “So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots; the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour.”
The Time Traveller was also shocked when he came across Weena who was very short and eventually became a companion of The Time Traveller. He first comes across Weena when she is drowning in water and no one attempts to rescue her in the water. This angers the Time Traveller and he eventually has to rescue her himself. He describes the scene like this; “It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures, when I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly-crying little thing which was drowning before their eyes.”
Weena eventually becomes a companion in the future world to the Time Traveller and represents the good things of the future world to The Time Traveller. In Weena, the Time Traveller fins someone who is very compassionate and very friendly. Weena also shows that she is very brave, caring and loyal and shows a lot of love and tenderness to the Time Traveller and she is probably the only person in the future world who shows these attributes, which is a very good side of humanity. When the Time Traveller saves Weena, she is very surprised because she has never experienced this before and shows her gratefulness to The Time Traveller by giving him flowers but then The Time Traveller loses her when she dies and he is terribly saddened because he desperately wanted to bring Weena back with him from his travels in the future world.
When The Time Traveller went to the future world, he noticed a lot of things, which would as I said earlier disgust a Victorian person. Among the things the Time Traveller saw were the loss and of language and communication, which the Time Traveller describes as, “Either I missed some subtle point, or their language was excessively simple- almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Their sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to understand any but the simplest propositions.” The Time Traveller also described The Eloi as having, “the death of an intellect.”
Also The Time Traveller noticed the loss of art and culture, which he saw when he was what looked like “the ruins of some latter-day South Kensington.” He was also in what looked like The Natural History Museum. In there he found that everything was almost derelict and he also noticed that everything was covered in dust and things lay broken.
Not only did the Time Traveller notice the loss of culture but also the loss of agriculture where he tells us, “There were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidence of agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.”
The Time also came across of the fact that there was no religion, which meant that the future world was a soulless society and that the aristocratic class were now being overtaken by the power of the working class who were The Morlocks.
The last point I would like to address is the fact of the Time Traveller always coming up with hypotheses. This originates to the style of H.G Wells and his scientific language, which he uses to convey across his ideas. In the future world some of the hypotheses The Time Traveller says are very correct. Some of his hypotheses that are very correct are the suggesting of global warming which he says in chapter four, “I saw a great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, as yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw richer green flow up from the hillside, and remain there without any wintry intermission.” Also in that quote, The Time Traveller talks about tall buildings, which was unheard of in Victorian times.
All the hypotheses show that the creative powers of the Victorian writers were immense and by looking at what the Time Traveller sees in the future world and by the evidence that I have given, we can see that what the Time Traveller does see does exemplify the fears of a Victorian person coming true.
