The Hook
In H. G. Wellsβs The Time Machine, a man builds a machine, lands in the year eight hundred and two thousand, seven hundred and one, and then spends most of the book explaining what he sees. And he guesses wrong. Twice he throws a theory away, and the third one, he admits, may be wrong too. This is a full summary, ending included, so it spoils everything.
So I tracked his theories. The Time Traveller guesses what happened to humanity, learns something new, and has to start again. Each theory is a step in the plot.
Which Text
I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number thirty-five. Its header gives a release date of October second, two thousand four. The story has sixteen numbered chapters plus a short Epilogue, and by my count about thirty-two thousand words. I give no first publication date, because I could not source one twice.
One more thing. The hero is never given a name, only the title the Time Traveller, and the storyteller is just βIβ. Keep that in mind, because it matters in the ending.
The Dinner Party
It opens at a dinner at the Time Travellerβs house. After the meal he explains to his guests that time is a fourth dimension, like length, breadth and thickness, except that we only drift along it one way. His guests are the Psychologist, the Medical Man, the Provincial Mayor, a man called Filby, and the storyteller himself. They are not convinced.
So he shows them a model. It is a little glittering frame of metal, ivory and crystal. The Psychologist presses the lever, and the model vanishes. There is a breath of wind, and the table is bare. He also shows them the full size machine, still unfinished.
A week later he does not come to dinner. Then the door opens, and he stands there, dusty and limping, with a cut chin and bloody socks. He eats first. Then he tells them he has been time travelling, and that he has lived eight days.
The Arrival
His story begins that morning. He sits in the saddle, pulls the lever, and watches the days flicker by. The sun becomes a streak, the seasons flash, and buildings rise and melt like mist. Frightened of the crash that a stop might cause, he yanks the lever too hard and is thrown out of the saddle.
He lands on grass in the hail. Through the rain, he sees a huge white stone figure on a bronze pedestal. It is a winged sphinx, and it seems to smile. The dials say the year is eight hundred and two thousand, seven hundred and one.
Then a small crowd of people arrives. They are about four feet tall, dressed in soft robes, and gentle. They laugh, touch his hands, and hang flowers around his neck. One of them asks if he came from the sun in a thunderstorm. That is not the question he expected from the far future. Later he learns their name: the Eloi.
Theory One
Here is theory number one. The Time Traveller walks to a hilltop at sunset and looks at the world. There are no small houses, no fields, no shops. Everyone wears the same clothes, and the men and women look alike. They eat fruit and sleep in big halls. He says to himself, communism.
His reasoning goes like this. Humanity beat nature. Disease is gone, struggle is gone, and without hardship, strength and intelligence fade. So he decides this is a paradise that has gone soft, and that he has understood the whole secret of the world. In his words, it is a plausible theory, as most wrong theories are.
Then the moon rises, and he walks back to the little lawn. The Time Machine is gone.
The Loss
He runs two miles in ten minutes. He pounds on the pedestal of the sphinx. He bursts into a hall of sleeping people and shakes them. Nothing. In the morning he finds a groove in the turf and narrow footprints leading to the pedestal, which is hollow. The machine is inside, and the doors will not open.
At least he has kept the little levers in his pocket, so nobody can use it. He calms himself and decides to learn this world.
That is when he meets Weena. He saves her from drowning, because none of the others tries. She gives him flowers, follows him around, and sleeps with her head on his arm. But she is terrified of the dark.
Theory Two
One grey dawn he sees white shapes running up the hill. Then, one hot morning, he sees a pair of glowing eyes in a ruin and a pale creature that bolts down a well. These wells are everywhere, and they hum with a thudding sound. Down there lives a second species. Their name, he learns, is Morlocks.
So he builds theory two. Rich people stayed above ground, and workers went below. The Morlocks became the servants of the Eloi, running the machines that feed and clothe them. The workers and the idle rich split into two species. That is the gap between rich and poor taken to the end of the road.
He says himself this was only what he thought at the time. Weenaβs tears when he asks about the Underworld hint at what he has missed.
Theory Three
He climbs down a well, two hundred yards, to find his machine. At the bottom he strikes a match and sees a huge cavern with machines and a table with red meat on it. Hands touch him. He runs short of matches, fights through the dark, and barely climbs back out.
Now the moon is waning, and the Dark Nights are coming. Weena has been warning him. And that is when he understands the meat. The Morlocks are not servants. They are hunters, and the Eloi are fatted cattle. The old order is reversed. This is theory three, the one he keeps, though he admits it may be as wrong as any.
He decides to take Weena and find a refuge, arms and fire. They head for a huge, ruined building he calls the Palace of Green Porcelain.
The Museum and the Fire
The Palace is a museum, full of dust, skeletons and rusted machines. He snaps a lever off a machine for a club. He finds a box of matches in a sealed case, and a lump of camphor. He is so happy he dances. Two dynamite cartridges turn out to be dummies.
They set out for the Sphinx at dusk, but the night catches them in a wood. He had lit a pile of sticks behind them, just to amaze the Morlocks. In the wood he builds a second fire, nods off, and wakes with hands on him. Then the first fire arrives, the trees burn, the Morlocks stampede blind, and Weena is gone. He never finds her, and he believes she is dead.
The Trap
In the morning, he comes back to the Sphinx and finds the bronze doors wide open. The Time Machine is inside, cleaned and oiled. It is a trap, and he knows it. He steps in, and the doors slam shut.
He reaches for a match. It is the kind that lights only on the box. In the dark, he fights off their hands, fixes the levers, and throws the lead one forward.
He is not seated properly, and he pulls the lever forward instead of back, so he rushes into the future. He stops, with a huge red sun, a dead beach and giant crabs. Thirty million years on, snow falls, and a black ball with tentacles hops in the dusk. Then he turns the levers, and heads home.
The Ending
He lands in his laboratory at almost eight oβclock, the same evening. The Pall Mall Gazette on the table has todayβs date. He walks into the dining room, and the story ends there.
He tells his guests they can call it a lie or a prophecy. The Editor calls it a gaudy lie. The Medical Man examines two white flowers that Weena put in his pocket and cannot name them. The next day the storyteller finds him with a camera and a knapsack, promising proof by lunch. He goes into the laboratory, and the machine vanishes with him. Three years on, he has not come back. The Epilogue wonders where he went. It is the end of the plot, and my ending explained video goes deeper.
My Take
This part is my opinion, so treat it as a draft. What I like is that the hero is not always right. He is clever, he is brave, and he is wrong, says so, and tries again. The novel is short, fast, and it never stops moving. What I like least is that Weena is mostly there to be saved. I give it four and a half out of five.
If this helped, there are more pages on bookexplained.com, including characters and the ending explained. Which of the three theories would you have believed?
