Question: An analysis of the contrasts made between, The time traveller, Elois and Morlocks, in the Time Machine by H.G Wells, During this SSL I intend to consider the links made by Wells between The time Traveller. Elois and the Morlocks. This linkage comes from the question that I believe is being suggested by Wells in the novel, Where do we draw the line between the primitive beast and the supposed modern man? In H.G. Wells novel The Time Machine, I believe that Wells successfully delivers a commentary on the battling forces within mankind. These battling forces being man's primitive being versus his civil being. Through the presentation of a time traveller's experiences ...view middle of the document...
For example the saving of the flowers picked by Weena in his jacket pocket. Also his Eloi like nature is displayed when he lights the matches for the enjoyment of the Elois. In the eyes of the time traveller the Elois are the more humane of the two cultures which draws him to them. This is when he says, "However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi and kept to much of the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their Fear."(Pg. 72) However we see that the time traveller is also representative of the Morlocks at the closing of his journey where he leaves Weena to be eaten by the Morlocks or to be killed by the fire. The Time traveller tries to find a separating factor between the two kinds of people, yet he later realises that there is no separating factor. However we on page 74 see the Morlocks side of the time traveller, when he goes on a killing spree. "and I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull I might encounter. And I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so." Through this quotation I believe that there is the creation of another grey area, in the character of the Time Traveller is he and Elois or a Morlock or is the human a mixture between them both.They long for a taste of his blood just as he longs for the taste of theirs. His reference to them as being his descendants shows that he is well aware of the linkage between the Morlock and himself. Here I thought Wells to be drawing the line that separates the civil human being from the primitive. Wells believed that this line of distinction actually lied in the humane treatment of one another. At the moment the time traveller embarks upon his Morlock killing spree he crosses that line. He is now being controlled by his primitive instincts over his more civil nature.The time traveller also tries to disassociate himself from the two cultures as much as possible. The repulsion showed on his part for the Morlocks is in an attempt to escape his own savage nature. It is a display of the time traveller's fear of his own primitive being. He describes them as being "filthy cold to the touch" (page 64). At one point he says that he shudders at the thought of how they must have already examined him. The fact of the matter is that he has been doing much more examining of the two cultures than they of he, sizing up of potential opponents that is commonplace among the primitive."But there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks - a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them. Before, I felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it. Now I felt like...
