The Time Machine

These diminutive people, called the Eloi, surround the Time Traveller, curiously touching him and his machine. Quickly, he leans into the craft, removes the levers, and pockets them for safekeeping. The inhabitants of this era on Earth—802,701 years in the future—have childlike bodies, curly hair, large eyes, small ears, and pointed, hairless chins. They chatter among themselves in a “soft cooing” language. Laughing, some of them place garlands of flowers on him.

They bring him to a gigantic, weather-worn stone building. Surrounding it are plants with huge flowers grown wild, as if untended. Beyond the main entrance is a great hall, where low stone tables await them, piled with fruit and lined with cushions for seats. Everyone sits and eats, including the famished Traveller. The diet consists entirely of fruit. He looks about: Some stained-glass windows are broken. Curtains are coated with dust.

He tries to learn bits of their language. He points, for example, at fruits to learn their names. He imitates so poorly their lilting tongue that they burst into laughter. His teachers soon grow tired and turn away, and he realizes that these people have short attention spans.

At sunset, the Traveller goes outside. He finds he is on the slope of a valley: the Thames River has moved a mile from its old course. Large, elegant buildings stand about in disrepair. These people live communally in large buildings. Children are miniature versions of their parents, and the Traveller wonders whether long-term peace and prosperity has caused the old distinctions between men’s and women’s bodies to wither away.

He climbs a hill, sits on an ancient carved bench, and gazes across the valley at dusk. He theorizes that social and technical progress has advanced so completely that it is no longer necessary for people to be intelligent or have ambition.

From the moonlit hilltop, the Time Traveller thinks about where to sleep. He orients himself and locates, in the distance, the white sphinx, which looms over the garden where the time machine should be. The device, though, is gone. In a panic, the Traveller dashes down the hill, at one point falling and cutting his face. He covers the two miles in ten minutes.

A frantic search reveals no sign of his machine. His only relief is knowing that he possesses the levers, without which the device will not function. He runs to the giant building and through the great hall to a second hall where a group of residents are asleep. He wakes them and demands angrily to know where his machine has been hidden. They stare at him, uncomprehending. Frustrated, he runs back outside, where he screams his frustration and continues his frenzied search, at one point pounding the bushes with his fists until they bleed.

He falls asleep on a lawn and wakes calmer the next morning. He decides that he will do everything he can to locate the machine. But if he must, he will find a way to build another. Looking around, he sees impressions in the grass where the machine had been. The white sphinx statue on its metal pedestal is nearby, and he reckons that the pedestal’s panels might also serve as doorways. He tries to interest nearby people in helping him open the panels, but they shrink away in horror and disgust.

The Traveller suddenly laughs at his predicament: He wants desperately to escape the very adventure that he has spent years anticipating. For the next couple of days, he continues to learn the language and explore the local region, hoping that more information will help him recover his lost machine.

The local hills contain buildings and gardens like those near his point of arrival. He notices, here and there, roofed well openings through which air is sucked deep into the earth. He can hear within the rhythmic thumping of a great machine. Elsewhere, tall towers emit shimmering air. He realizes that a system of subterranean vaults lies beneath him.

Several facts are puzzling him: He has no idea why his time machine was taken; there are no cemeteries or crematoria; no old people exist; and no shops or factories can be found that might create and maintain the bright clothes and constant supply of fruit. He reasons that it is difficult for an industrialized person to explain technology to a pre-industrial person, and so it must be much harder to comprehend the supremely advanced mechanics of this distant future time.

Before dawn on the second day, the Traveller rises and walks around. He sees indistinct white figures moving on a distant hillside. Another group of these pale creatures carries away the body of an Eloi.

During a walk, he observes people playing in the shallows of a creek. One of them gets caught in a current and, wailing, drifts downstream. None of the Eloi tries to help her, and the Traveller jumps in and rescues her. She is grateful, and they become friends. Her name is Weena, and she treats him with childlike devotion, following him everywhere. She complains bitterly when, on his walks, he outpaces her and leaves her behind. Still, she adores him, and he finds himself looking for her company whenever he returns from his explorations.

Though normally fearless and trusting, Weena displays a terror of the dark. None of the Eloi ventures out at night, and they sleep communally. Despite her fears, Weena chooses to sleep next to the Traveller in his lonely spot in another building’s great hall.

The climate is much warmer than he is used to, and he looks for shelter on hot days from the noonday heat. During one such interlude, he encounters, hiding in a dark alcove, a white, apelike creature that rushes past him and escapes down a dark well. The Traveller sees that the well shaft contains hand- and foot-holds.

The Time Traveller realizes that humanity has evolved not only into the friendly small beings he has met but also into these strange apes who live underground and maintain the technology that supports those who live aboveground. He learns that the surface dwellers are the Eloi, while the ones who live belowground are called Morlocks.

He reckons that the class distinctions of his own time between workers and elites had kept evolving until the upper class consolidated possession of the lovely, park-like surface of the Earth, while the workers—forced to travel in subways and to work in dark, underground factories and maintenance tubes—became the subterranean race of Morlocks. The perfection of the Elio’s aboveground lives caused them to undergo “a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence” (57).

The Traveller tries to learn more from Weena, but the thought of Morlocks makes her cry. Not wishing to cause her pain, he drops the subject.

To locate the time machine, the Traveller must descend into the underground world. At first afraid, he eventually gathers his courage and sets out to visit the Morlocks.

With Weena, he locates a well on a hillside. When she realizes his purpose, she tries to pull him back, but he shakes her off and climbs down the well’s ladder. It descends 200 yards to a side tunnel, where he rests, exhausted and scared. He feels hands touching him, and he lights a match to see a group of Morlocks running away.

He follows the side tunnel until it opens out onto a cavernous space filled with huge machines that thump and grind. Morlocks cower in the shadows. Holding up a lit match, he sees in the distance a table with a joint of bloody meat on it. His matches burn only for a few moments at a time, then darkness returns. He realizes that he has come to the future unprepared for such an exploration.

In the darkness, he feels the hands of Morlocks as they inspect him. He shouts at them in anger and they retreat, only to return more aggressive than before. He lights another match and escapes into the tunnel, but the Morlocks pursue him, tugging at his feet. He makes it to the main tunnel and begins to climb up to the surface. One of the Morlocks starts to follow him but soon retreats. The climb exhausts him; nauseous and dizzy, he barely makes it to the top. He tumbles out into the bright sunlight, and Weena kisses his hands. Other Eloi stand about. The chapter ends with the Traveller losing consciousness.

The Time Traveller realizes that, over countless generations, the relationship between the elite humans above and the worker humans below had somehow changed. Now, the subterranean race has the advantage, and they will soon make use of it during the dark nights of the new moon.

He decides to secure his sleeping quarters against an attack. He finds nothing safe in the river valley, but a gigantic building that he has noticed in the southwest beckons to him. He and Weena make the long trek. She sits sometimes on his shoulders, and sometimes she runs about, picking flowers and placing them in his trouser pockets.

Interrupting the Traveller’s narrative, the reader is briefly back in the host’s salon. He removes from his pocket a couple of large white flowers and places them on a side table. The he continues his story.

The Traveller and Weena continue in pitch darkness, and he must calm her fears of the night. One of his shoes has worked a nail up toward his foot, and he limps with pain. They find themselves lost in a huge, dark forest, and the Traveller decides to rest here. As Weena sleeps, he looks up at the stars and ponders the enormous passage of time between his own era of ambitious human striving and this age of enervated people and their carnivorous counterparts.

With a shock, he realizes that the meat eaten by the Morlocks must be the Eloi themselves. He tries to tell himself that the Eloi, as descendants of the wealthy class who once exploited their workers, somehow had it coming to them. Their still-human form, though, arouses his sympathy.

At dawn, the Time Traveller stands and finds that his shoes hurt him. He removes them and tosses them aside. He decides that he must procure weapons, especially torches, to fend off the Morlocks. With some tools, he thinks he will be able to open the white sphinx's pedestal and recover his time machine. Then, once aboard the device, he will bring Weena with him back to his own time.

At noon, they arrive at the giant building, a tall, pinnacled palace with shining, pastel-ceramic walls. Crumbling with age, this palace of green porcelain is a museum whose front room contains dusty, badly weathered fossils and half-broken skeletons of extinct creatures. Deeper within the building is a gallery of minerals, and another gallery contains the remains of a taxidermy collection.

Deeper still, a huge room contains the time-worn hulks of old machines. The floor slopes gently down until the room seems to be underground, and at the end, the Traveller sees recent Morlock footprints. This reminds him that he needs a weapon. From an ancient machine, he breaks off a lever that should serve the purpose.

Another giant room contains a library of books, but they have largely fallen apart from exposure. Upstairs is a gallery of chemistry with part of its roof fallen in. The Traveller finds, among the yet-unbroken glass cases, a box of matches and a jar of camphor that he can ignite for a light source. Delighted, in front of Weena he dances a jig on the dusty floor. Another room contains ancient weapons, including guns, but the guns have no ammunition, and his crowbar seems superior to the swords and axes.

The two explore several more rooms. Near sunset, they come to a courtyard with fruit trees, where they eat. The Traveller decides that his mace, matches, and camphor will be enough for the battles to come.