The Time Machine By H. G. Wells: Literary Analysis
To understand H.G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine it is best to look at this literary work through the eyes of what Louis Montrose describes as the “historicity of texts” (Montrose 588). With the ability to compare this literary work to every other text in modern literacy it is easier to comprehend not only the text, but also be able to apply the text to history itself because “we can have no access to a full and authentic past” (Montrose 588). This can provide more insight on the subject as well as how this literary work compares to history as a whole based only on what has been written in the literary works time of publication and present day literary and non-literary works. With this in mind, to better grasp H.G. Wells’ plot attempts to forewarn
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According to H.G. Wells in The Time Machine even if a utopian world were to survive it wouldn’t matter because; “The message of The Time Machine- that no life escapes extinction- is brought down to an individual level, so as to make the difficulty of the utopian life manifest” (Busch 159). This process of extending human life as long as possible seems almost unnecessary as the Time Traveler goes to what seems like the end of the world as we know it and states: “All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives- all of that was over” (Wells 66). So to prolong the life of one species means nothing in the end of the life of Earth. H.G. Wells himself proclaims that “Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him” (BrainyQuote.com). So in his own personal views, H.G. Wells doesn’t foresee man as the divine outlasting species set atop the world for an eternity. The practice of the method of historicity of texts helps us identify that H.G. Wells predicts the end of man as the inevitability that we will split as a species into the working class and the upper class as we know it now, ultimately causing them to fight for survival and eventually die because in the hindsight of things, nothing can live forever, not even man
According to H.G. Wells in The Time Machine even if a utopian world were to survive it wouldn’t matter because; “The message of The Time Machine- that no life escapes extinction- is brought down to an individual level, so as to make the difficulty of the utopian life manifest” (Busch 159). This process of extending human life as long as possible seems almost unnecessary as the Time Traveler goes to what seems like the end of the world as we know it and states: “All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives- all of that was over” (Wells 66). So to prolong the life of one species means nothing in the end of the life of Earth. H.G. Wells himself proclaims that “Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him” (BrainyQuote.com). So in his own personal views, H.G. Wells doesn’t foresee man as the divine outlasting species set atop the world for an eternity. The practice of the method of historicity of texts helps us identify that H.G. Wells predicts the end of man as the inevitability that we will split as a species into the working class and the upper class as we know it now, ultimately causing them to fight for survival and eventually die because in the hindsight of things, nothing can live forever, not even man