"We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow. Without them we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence."
My last review was on the First Doctor of the television series Doctor Who, which revolves around the concept of time travel. In this post, I'll be talking about the concept of time travel and its father, H.G. Wells of The Invisible Man and War of the Worlds fame. Not only did Wells' novel almost single-handedly popularized and created the concept of time travel, but it also makes a commentary on society and the important of scientific evolution and advancement. The book I will be discussing is, of course, The Time Machine. Published in 1895, The Time Machine and Wells is credited to coining the term "time machine" and is credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel. In this review, I will be talking mainly about what I thought of the book in general and my thoughts on some specific elements.
Overall, I thought it was a very well written book. It's extremely short at only 84 pages so it didn't take me very long to finish it and it kept me captivated the entire way. The book starts off little slowly with parts of it dedicated to science mumbo-jumbo that I really didn't get and wasn't interested in. But despite all that, science really isn't the main point of this book anyways (since HOW he figured out time travel doesn't really matter) so the science really doesn't matter. The book is more about social classes and how a lack of real challenge can make humans devolve, concluding that said challenge is what's crucial to human survival.
The book tells the story of an unnamed Time Traveller (who I will be calling Doc so I don't have to type out the entire thing over and over) who invents a time machine in Victorian England and travels to the year 802,701. There, he encounters two races of beings: the Eloi, who are small, childlike, but still refined and elegant human-like beings who live on a completely fruit-based diet in a dilapidated city, and the Morlocks, an ape-like group of creatures that live underground and has an extreme hatred towards sunlight. Doc is stranded because someone has taken his time machine and eventually begins to explore the society he is in. He notices that the Eloi are terrified of the dark and refuses to address the mysterious disappearances of several of their people at night. He also notes that the entire place has become rather primitive, with no signs of technology and the world a garden.
Doc eventually ventures down one of the Morlock tunnels and discovers gears and machinery underground that works to make the aboveground world of the Eloi possible. Therefore, he concludes that the relationship between the Eloi and the Morlocks are that of a lord and servant where the Eloi are the rich upper class evolved into never needing to be physical or intellectual while the Morlocks are the lower class labourers who have evolved into working underground, constantly in submission. However, Doc soon learns that the dynamic between the two groups are actually quite different then as he previously imagined.
Doc discovers that because of the lack of any real meat to be found, the Morlocks are eating the Eloi at night (which explains why the Eloi are terrified of the dark and the mysterious disappearances of the Eloi). This means that the relationship between the Eloi and the Morlocks are more akin to livestock and ranchers, with the Morlocks keeping the Eloi alive for the sole purpose of eating them. And because the wealthy-descended Eloi are so used to not working or facing any real change, they eventually reached the point where they couldn't fend off against the hard-working, surviving, more intelligent Morlocks.
This Eloi-Morlock relationship definitely is one of Wells' political messages; as a socialist, Wells advocated for the abolition of class divides, and it certainly shows in The Time Machine. He uses the two groups' relationship to warn the people that if the rich continue to live their easy lives, there will come a point where they become so lazy and entitled that the hardworking lower class people will eventually dominate over them. Wells' emphasis on the importance of constant challenges to fertilize human growth is clearly illustrated in the quote above where Wells specifically write "We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence." And his view that humans were "de-evolving" was probably what caused him to advocate for eugenics.
I think that the argument Wells makes here is a completely valid one. Nearly every great human achievements throughout history were made through competition and challenge. The US sent men on the moon because they were in competition with the USSR, for example. The human race thrives on challenge because without challenge, nothing motivates us as people to grow any more. If things had been perfect with no conflicts whatsoever since the beginning of time, mankind would likely still be living in the Stone Age. This was something that I really liked about Wells; how he sent an important or interesting message of some sort in each of his books for us to think about (for example, in The Invisible Man, Wells' message is that humans are capable of doing evil things we never imagined if given the ability and chance to do so).
Although I'm not the biggest fan of science fiction, I think that The Time Machine is one of the best sci-fi novels I've ever read. Wells' concept of time travel is fascinating for the 1890s, but what's even more interesting is the food for thought that the Well leaves for the readers at the end, about how human race depends on challenges and difficulties to grow, even though those are the things we seek to eradicate. It's also extremely well-written and it has aged extremely well. I've found that some older books have a tendency to drag in many places, but The Time Machine was a great page turner, and it kept me engaged and interested the entire way through. If you like sci-fi or any H.G. Wells novels, I would greatly recommend The Time Machine, and even if you aren't a big sci-fi fan, I would still recommend this novel to you because as much the book is science fiction, it's also political and philosophical in many ways and I think anyone with some interest in those areas can enjoy this book.
For my next review, I'm going to be doing an adaptation review about a very old book concerning a rabbit hole, deck of cards, and a wonderland written by a man named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!
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