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For Tuesday: Wells, The Time Machine, Chapters 1-6 (at least)



NOTE: This is a short work, so feel free to read as much as you like for Tuesday's class. But we can probably only tackle the first 6 chapters in class, so that's a comfortable place to get to for Tuesday's class. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Though this is a science fiction story about time travel, it also shares a lot in common with our first two works: Frankenstein and Sherlock Holmes. Where might we see the Victor or Holmes influence in these opening chapters? Also, what aspects of the storytelling might Wells have borrowed from his famous predecessors?

Q2: In the future, the Time Traveller is constantly forming theories as to what created such a strange, forbidding world. As he notes, “For the first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a logical consequence enough…Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward. And the harvest was what I saw!” (31). What “social effort” does he seem to be describing here, and is he excited or terrified by the “harvest” he sees before him? What might he fear the future has become?

Q3: Strangely, the book opens with a conversation between several gentlemen, none of whom have names other than "The Time Traveler," "The Medical Man," and "The Provincial Mayor?" Why does Wells make them so safely anonymous, and what are they talking about that might have seemed exciting--and disturbing--in 1895?  

Q4: Even though the Time Traveler is catapulted thousands of years into the future, he often uses quite primitive metaphors and imagery to describe his emotions and surroundings: "I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind--a strange animal in an unknown world"...”I might seem some old-world savage animal”…"The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me,” etc. Why does the Time Traveller see everything in this ‘law of the jungle’ light?

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