H G Wells wants us to compare the Morlocks with the crab-like creatures because he wants to show what will happen to humans when they evolve. Wells wanted to scare people. In this extract the time-traveller carries on ‘moving on a hundred years’ He could be doing this to satisfy his own curiosity that this is not the ends of human life. Wells makes sure the time-traveller goes back to Victorian society to share what he has found because he is trying to implant the idea of change into the readers mind. This agrees with H G Wells ideas and could suggest that he is trying to warn the reader.
This could also show that he is trying to scare the reader. You could compare the book to current films like ‘Day After Tomorrow’ because it deals with current issues. ‘Day After Tomorrow’ talks about a current issue of global warming. When ‘Time Machine’ was written there were many theories about evolution. For instance, the time-traveller goes forward in time and expects the world to get better; this could go with the issues that Darwin and his theory of evolution were raising in Victorian society at the time.
The word ‘desolation’ shows H G Wells agreement with Huxley’s theory of entropy and decay. When the time-traveller goes forward in time, what he finds is not what he expected. The time-traveller expects everything/everyone to have evolved. What he finds is H G Wells view on the future-entropy and decay. When the traveller arrives in the future his first assumption is that the Eloi is the upper-class and the Morlocks are their ‘slaves’. This is a very capitalist idea and could easily relate to Victorian times.
In the Time Machine, when the traveller is ‘looking around again’ he has a sense of confusion about what is happening. The word ‘again’ suggests that he has already looked around him and is still uncertain of what he is seeing. This could also make the reader nervous as they too don’t know what is going on. The word ‘uncertainly’ could suggest that the time traveller has a sense of what is going on but is not totally sure. The fear and tension that the time traveller could be experiencing might transfer to the reader because they know exactly what he does-which is not a whole lot.
This could be disconcerting to the reader because they would like to know what is going on but cant. Throughout the extract you get a feeling of a horrific view of what humanity has evolved into. For example, the continuous references to ‘monsters’ could suggest that what humans have evolved are extremely horrible. Also, the way the world has been described gives you a sense of horror. In the last half of the extract the way the world is described gives you a sense of the worlds end.
This is because H G Wells describes everything as dying and it’s all just not very good. ‘The same dying sea’ suggests that it has been going on for a large amount of time and there is no going back as its dying. ‘Looking around me again’ suggests that the time traveller is unfamiliar with his surroundings and that he has already had a look and is quite unsure. ‘I saw that, quite near’ creates a fear of the unknown as it could be something dangerous.
Also it makes the reader think why didn’t he notice it before now? What I had taken to be’ shows that the traveller was mistaken the first time. Also, quite far into the sentence, we still don’t know what it is that they are going on about. ‘A reddish mass of rock’ shows that this could be a new thing as its not actually red but that is they only thing you can describe it as. Furthermore, it suggests that it is big, hard-looking and irregular and there aren’t many things you can mistake that for. ‘Was moving slowly’ indicates that it is big and irregular because it is moving slowly.
It suggests fear as we still don’t know what it is but it is moving slowly so the traveller wouldn’t be in any immediate kind of danger. ‘Towards me’, at the end of the sentence we still don’t know what this thing is, but the time-traveller is clearly in some kind of danger. This sentence is a great example of how Wells use of sentence structure builds up tension and fear throughout the book. When the time-traveller comes back for the first time and tells his story and continues on to disappear forever, it does not directly indicate that he went forward in time on the planet earth.
He could have gone anywhere. The extract talks about a dying planet and everything on it but that could be anywhere. This could cause the reader to be confused or cautious because it doesn’t give you a definitive answer of what happened. It could leave them intrigued into what happens at the end of the world. I think that Wells was successful in creating fear and tension because at many points during the book, the reader could become frightened as to what is going to happen to the world and the time traveller.
