Theme Of Intelligence In H. G. Wells Time Traveler

In their quest to produce optimal comfort for themselves, humans harness their intelligence, the greatest instrument for dominating nature. After escaping the barrages of Morlocks, the H.G. Wells' Time Traveller expounds his theory on how the human race has reached the state that he is witnessing it in and in doing so implies that to foster prosperity, humans implant stability and complacency in the world, and that therefore vapid satisfaction is the essential ingredient of the ideal world in which man has subjugated nature. Performing a "suicide," the "dream of human intellect," which is to propagate "comfort and ease," gives rise to the society that precedes that of the Eloi and Morlocks—a society that truly consists of people specialized
Pip's intellect tarnishes his view of the life he inherits. After meeting Estella, a beautiful woman of the upper classes, Pip's mental tumult effervesces as it plots to alter his role in society and thereby attain her affection: "Estella was so inseparable from all my restlessness and disquiet of mind" (Dickens 300). The "disquiet" that has captured Pip contrasts with the "great quiet" that permeates the steady society of the future; Pip's mental state, which is entirely opposite to that of the Eloi, should effect an experience just as opposite. When eventually Pip gains the status that he desires, he enters the society of the rich, and is "always more or less miserable" (Dickens 302)—the Eloi, on the other hand, have a "graceful gentleness, a certain childlike ease" (Wells 23). Unlike the Eloi, Pip, driven by aspirations, routinely exits his natural role. In his murderous encounter with Orlick, mental ebullitions continue to upset Pip's otherwise relatively undisturbed emotions: "The death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible than death was the dread of being misremembered after death. And so quick were my thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn generations" (Dickens 447). "[T]houghts" thus inundate Pip with a concern for how others view him that further inhibits him from relaxing and demands from Pip the impossibility of escaping Orlick when Pip could placidly accept his doom and raise his comfort level (at least marginally). Relief does finally come to him, however, when, recognizing how brooding ambition has affected him, he refrains from trying to preserve his wealth, doing nothing to reverse the impending fate: "I finally resolved...and ever afterwards abided by the resolution...that my heart should never be sickened with the hopeless task of attempting to establish [a claim on the fortune]" (Dickens 469). A confined path towards a goal