Comparing Dystopia In The Time Machine And The Dispossessed

The Dystopian and Utopian texts The Time Machine by HG Wells and Ursula LeGuins’s The Dispossessed subvert and conform to traditional perspectives on humanity and genre conventions as a reflection of their respective contexts. These genres share a common characteristic in that they aim to criticise their respective societies through an ambiguous utopia in The Dispossessed and a future that is initially perceived to be a utopia but is subsequently revealed as a dystopia in The Time Machine. The author’s respective contexts allows for contrast of these critiques in relation to their challenging of traditional perspectives on humanity.
HG Wells’ political commentary of late Victorian England critiques his society and its structure through the exaggeration of humanity’s faults in a dystopia rather than correcting those faults in a utopia. In the initial depiction of the future society as a utopia, the dystopia becomes ambitious similar to Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and as such demonstrates a subversion to the genre. Wells suggests that current society change its ways lest it end up passive, lazy and unintelligent like the Eloi, terrified of an underground race of Morlocks. The Eloi are a fundamental point of satire of Wells’ society, as in the Eloi there are critiques of Victorian decadence. The Time Traveller is immediately unimpressed and disappointed by the beautiful Eloi, as he states “I never met people more indolent or more easily fatigued.” He looks down upon them,
Thus these texts comparatively are seeking change in their respective societies, but in contrast these texts experiment with differing ideas to realise these