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The Time Machine by H.G. Wells - Chapters VII, VIII and IX (7 - 9)

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 10:39 pm
by Chris OConnor
The Time Machine
by H.G. Wells
Chapters VII, VIII and IX (7 - 9)
Please use this thread for discussing the above referenced chapters.

Re: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells - Chapters VII, VIII and IX (7 - 9)

Posted: Mon May 07, 2018 5:03 pm
by Harry Marks
So now we meet the creepy Morlocks. Consigned to an underworld by the evolving industrial economy, they have become ghostly pale and big-eyed like a cave creature. With even less ability to communicate with them, the narrator finds them overly aggressive about touching him and taking his measure. He feels he must get away from them, in part because he is convinced they took his Machine, and in part because the frivolous Eloi are afraid of them and of the entire Underworld, but in part because they are just creepy.

The fundamental set-up, with everything industrial moving underground, I find implausible and a bit ridiculous. But as an image of the underside of humanity, it works well enough. After all, who knows what humanity will be like in hundreds of millennia in the future?

I'm also not too enamored of the Gulliver's Travels set-up, where the strong guy from our day lands among the weak and decrepit peoples of the future as a kind of tourist, and must interact with the "natives" somehow to get back.

But I have to admit Wells is intriguing enough with his parable and symbolisms to keep me interested. I want to see where he's going. I find it easy to forgive what I consider lapses, such as the little Eloi girl falling into the river and nearly drowning in a world made effete by lack of challenges and difficulties. Everything has been mastered, it seems, except effective flotation.