The time machine door H.G. Wells

The Time Machine starts with a kind of lecture by the protagonist, an inventor from London whose name was not once mentioned in the book; Throughout the book he is simply called the Time Traveller. He is accompanied by various well-educated people. He speaks about there being a fourth dimension. The three existing dimensions are length, breadth and thickness, but he declares there is another dimension, called duration.

“There is no difference between Time and any of the other three dimensions of Space except that our conciousness moves along with it.” p.4

He explains that it’s of course really easy to move forwards and backwards, right and left, but moving vertically already creates issues. We can’t really go up because of gravity. Just as it’s hard to go back in time, stop time or slow down time. We are always moving through time, just with a constant velocity. The Time Traveller has created a prototype of a Time Machine. It contained ivory and brass. When the lever is pulled, the machine disappears. For a minute there is a discussion about whether it travelled into the future or into the past. For, if it had travelled into the future, how could they not see it right there, since it did not move through space it must be visible. And had it travelled into the past, it would’ve been there before he even put it there. But the Time Traveller explains that because it moves so much faster through the dimension of Time that the device would only be visible for a fraction of a second.

When they arrived at the protagonist’s house the next week, they were surprised that he was not present. Just when they were about to start dinner without him, he enters the room. He looks exhausted and pale. He tells his company that he has travelled through time. He would explain everything after dinner, for he was dying for something to eat. After dinner they enter the smoking-room and his story begins.

He explains how he travelled through time: one lever to go forward into time and one to go backwards. He pulled the first lever and speeds through time.

“I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like that one has upon a switchback – of a helpless headlong motion!” p. 16

His velocity was great and ever-increasing. At some point, the distinction between night and day was no longer visible to him; It turned into a continious greyness. Eventually he stops the machine and ends up in the year 802.701. He notices a giant statue of something that looks like a Sphinx close to his machine. Then he hears voices; This would be the first sing of life in the future for the Time Traveller.

“He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful kind of consumptive – that hectivce beauty of which we used to hear so much.” p. 19

He describes these creatures as beautiful though frail, they are no more than 130cm tall. They were both extremely curious and easily distracted, like their heads were empty.

He studies them well and is disappointed that these creatures show no higher form of intelligence than the traveller himself, for he had always thought people of the future were extremely knowledgeable. These creatures, whom he calls the Eloi, are vegetarians and don’t show any form of educated society. They bring him to a great building, which appears to have been abandoned for a long time, judging by the broken windows and curtains thich with dust. There were over a hundred of these Eloi in the dining room, eating of course only fruits. He gets bored of these creatures just as fast as they do of him and goes out. There are no houses anymore, just some palacelike buildings scattered across the surface. The only thing visible are those houses and fruits and flowers and trees. He comes up with a very plausible explanation of their physical and mental capabilities.

“Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness.” p. 27

As the night approached, he would make his way to the palace to sleep, but first he would gaze once again at this landscape. He caught the sphinx again, which stood upon a bronze pedestal, and his heart stopped for a second as he realised that his Machine was gone. He was sure it could not have travelled through time, for he had removed the little levers from the machine when he arrived.

               “I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put the mechanism in some shelter for me, had I not been assured of their physical and intellectual inedequacy.” p. 30

So the only other option was that some unknown force had moved it. He suspecte dit was inside the Sphinx, and banged upon the bronze panels until his knuckles bled. He could not get through it. Upon further inspection he noticed that there were large, deep wells scattered on the surface. There was no water to be found inside but there was a strong circulation of air, which was rather strange.

That day he also rescued a female Eloi from the water, since no other person even seemed to care about the fact that this woman was drowning. He found out her name was Weena, and noticed that she is not afraid of anything but the dark; Everything that was dark was frightening.

The night before was his first encounter with the Morlocks, another descendant from the human. He does not know anything about these creatures yet. The next day he encounters one again, in a dark room in a ruin nearby. They are ape-like figures with a pale skin, greyish-red eyes and long flaxen hair on its head and back. He followed it and noticed that it rapidly climbed down one of the wells, he was frightened for the first time in the future.