The Time Machine

The Time Machine is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells published in 1895. The book’s protagonist, who is never named and called only the Time Traveller, is a brilliant Victorian inventor who travels 800,000 years into the future. He finds that humans have evolved into two distinct species, called the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are peace-loving and childlike simpletons who are farmed and eaten by the brutal Morlocks, who live underground. This short novel was Wells’s first, and it made him famous. The work has influenced generations of speculative fiction writers and has twice been made into a motion picture.

Wells also wrote The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and nearly 50 other books. He was nominated four times for a Nobel Prize in literature. Wells was a prominent figure in the early 20th century, known not only for his novels but also for his modern and scientific approach to major issues of the day and for his support for socialism and pacifism.

The Time Machine is in the public domain and is widely available on the internet. Readers should be prepared for a small number of anachronistic racial and gender terms in the text. The 2017 Amazon Classics e-book edition forms the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

The novel is told in the first person using a frame story about a dinner party. The narrator is a guest at the party, and the Time Traveller is the host. The Time Traveller recounts his adventures in the future to his guests beginning in Chapter 3. His story comprises the bulk of the novel. The novel concludes with a return to the scene of the dinner party, and the final chapter describes the guests’ dismayed reactions to their host’s tale.

The novel opens with a gathering of educated, upper-class men enjoying after-dinner conversation in an elegant home in Richmond, outside London. Their host, an inventor whom the narrator calls only the Time Traveller, is describing his theory that people can travel in time. The guests are intrigued but skeptical.

The Time Traveller shows the guests a clock-sized model of his time machine. He presses a lever on the device and it vanishes, astonishing the guests. Next, the Time Traveller escorts them to his laboratory and shows them the full-sized version of the device. The Traveller insists that none of the evening’s events are tricks and that he fully intends to travel through time when the machine is completed.

The following Thursday, the inventor’s guests assemble again. The host arrives late. His clothes are a mess, and his face is ashen. He claims that he has, since that very morning, experienced eight days of astonishing adventure in his time machine.

He describes climbing into the device and setting the levers to move forward in time. The hours begin to speed by. Day and night replace each other, faster and faster, until they whir by in a blur. Stopping the machine 802,000 years into the future, he discovers a race of diminutive, childlike creatures who are descended from humans. These are the Eloi, who enjoy a diet of fruit, spend their days idly, and are both mentally and physically weak.

The Traveller finds that his time machine has gone missing. A frantic search turns up few clues. He thinks the machine may have been hidden inside a large statue of a white sphinx. Despite his pleas, no one will go near the statue or help him open it.

A female Eloi falls into a stream and, seeing the lack of concern among the Eloi, the Time Traveller jumps in and rescues her. The two become friends. The woman, named Weena, grows devoted to him, and she follows him everywhere.

Early one morning, the Traveller notices white creatures on a distant hillside. These creatures are Morlocks, apelike with large eyes and pale fur. The Traveller learns that the Morlocks live underground, while the Eloi live aboveground. He climbs down one of the wells and finds there, underground, the machinery that keeps the Eloi alive. These machines are tended by the Morlocks. Several Morlocks try to capture him, and he narrowly escapes and returns to the surface.

The Traveller and Weena walk for many miles to a distant building on a hill. The building is an ancient, crumbling museum. Inside there are broken-down exhibits of extinct animals, old machinery, many scientific specimens, and books whose pages have long disintegrated. In the museum, he makes a torch and a weapon for himself out of the bits and pieces of machinery he finds there.

He and Weena trek back toward her home. That night, in the dark forest, they are set upon by Morlocks. The Traveller fends them off, but not before they capture Weena. He lights some camphor that he took from the museum, which further daunts them. The flames ignite a forest fire that forces everyone to retreat to a barren hill, and many Morlocks, stunned and confused, die in the conflagration.

The Traveller survives and returns to the garden with the mysterious white sphinx. The statue’s large pedestal has been opened, and inside sits the time machine. The Traveller enters the pedestal just before it closes. Quickly, he reinstalls the machine’s levers, sending himself far into the future, where he encounters a dying planet Earth: the sun glows huge and dull red, the air is thin, and the animals are monstrous.

Terrified by what he sees, he sets the machine to travel backward to his own time, where he emerges and tells the story to his dinner guests. They refuse to believe him. However, the narrator is curious to learn more, and he returns the next day. He witnesses the Traveller and his machine disappear from the lab—evidently, on another journey through time. The Traveller is never seen again.