Study notes: The Time Machine
A Victorian inventor tells his dinner guests that he has ridden a machine into the far future. He finds a soft, childish people on the surface and something hungry in the dark below. Wells is writing science fiction and a social argument at the same time: if the world splits into those who play and those who labor, both sides may become less human. The frame is a man talking in a parlor. The story he tells does not stay polite.
Themes
Time as a place you can visit. Class division taken to an extreme. Stories inside stories, and whether the guests should believe him.
People to follow
The Time Traveller, his skeptical guests, the Eloi, and the Morlocks.
Talk about
- What is Wells worried about in his own century?
- Why do the dinner guests matter?
- Is the future a prediction or a warning costume?
Public-domain text.