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Jun 11, 2018audrey321 rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
The Time Machine is one of my favorite classics, and H. G. Wells is my favorite classic author. This was the second of three novels I have read by Wells, and one of my favorites. One of the best things about his writing is that he is not overly wordy and has elaborate works that you can read in a short amount of time. He also has an entertaining way of wording things which makes his chapters compelling and dramatic. Hardly past the exposition, one of many memorable scenes is made suspenseful with his thrilling wording: “I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running violently in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx, and startling some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a small deer.” His writing style intrigues the reader and sparks curiosity. One drawback of The Time Machine is that the characters are not particularly interesting or relatable. The main characters of many of his books are pretty regular middle aged men. However, his writing is very unique and beyond imagination, and I’m a big fan of this book. Summary: The story begins at a dinner party where the main character, ‘The Time Traveller,’ brings up ideas of time travel to the other guests, who are skeptical. But he shows up late to the following dinner party and tells a story of his travels to the year 802,700. In the future he met small, dumb, lazy creatures called the Eloi who he thought to be descendants of humans. He gets close with one of these creatures after saving her, a girl named Weena, from drowning. His time machine then gets mysteriously stolen, so he has to stick around to get it back. Pretty soon he sees signs of a creepy, ghostly species, also descending from humans, called Morlocks. He finds out they live underground and goes down to see them, but they are creepy and revolting and the Time Traveller immediately considers them the enemy. He then spends some time traveling to a faraway building that he saw earlier, and here he finds a museum from which he takes a weapon. While he travels back to where he started he sleeps in the woods with Weena and gets attacked by Morlocks during a dramatic forest fire. Many Morlocks die as well as Weena. When he gets back he finds his time machine, stolen by the Morlocks, in the middle of a trap. He manages to fight his way through the trap and get away in his machine. Then there is a strange chapter of him traveling to the end of the Earth which is silent and dead. He then returns to the dinner party to tell the story. The novel ends with the narrator telling us that the Time Traveller enters his machine later and doesn’t return. The whole plot is quite a bit to think about, especially with so many ideas of the future and time. Throughout the story the Time Traveller gives many theories on how humans ended up this way, which makes you think about predicting the far future, what will get worse, what will get better, and how our current actions are affecting the end of it all. Will humanity improve or deteriorate? His theories also include the analysis of humanity’s two descendants-- one being leisurely and peaceful and the other being carnivorous and rough. These ideas deal with issues like upper and lower class, masculinity and femininity, and more. Wells also brings in other ideas to provoke thought. For instance, he never gives his character a name, like he has done before in other books. He also throws in some ideas about progress, and whether it really exists, because everything just ends up ending. The end of the world is a big symbol of these ideas, as well as the deterioration of humanity. Overall, this story is packed with unique and profound new ideas put together in one exciting and impressive plot.