The Time Machine - Plot Summary

H.G. Wells The Time Machine Mischel Figusch

Englisch-LK Jg. 13

Plot Summary

The novel begins with a dinner meeting at the Time Traveller's house. The present intellectual group, consisting of the narrator, a Psychologist, a Medical Man and a Provincial Mayor are discussing the theme of the fourth dimension, i.e. time. The TT tries to explain the theory and the possibility of time travelling.

As the guests doubted his words he proves his theory with a small model of a time machine, which disappears into future, like the TT claims.

One week later, at the next meeting, the TT is absent.

But then all of a sudden he comes in midway through the meal, haggard and limping. At this point the frame story ends and goes over into the main story which is narrated by the TT who tells the astonished guests about his eight days - adventure in the future.

He recounts his first impressions about the year 802.701 A.D. where he stops his time travel in a paradise - like future world. Everything is blooming with plants and flowers. He sees a big winged sphinx-like statue with a bronze pedestal.

He gets to know the inhabitants of this "new" world: the so called "Eloi" who are very small and frail creatures. They doesn't seem very advanced to him and their behaviour is childish and unintelligent. The TT recognizes that the Eloi look identically, are dressed identically and that their mansions look identically. The TT speculates on a kind of advanced form of Communism.

Afterwards the TT realizes that his time machine has vanished. He sees traces which lead into the pedestal of the Sphinx. He presumes his Time machine to be in there.

He tries to get into the pedestal but fails.

On the next day the TT rescues a young female Eloi from drowning and they become friends. At one night the TT encounters a Morlock in one of the forsaken buildings for the first time, the second race like he assumes, which looks like a white ape. He learns that the Morlocks live in the Underworld, and develops the theory that they are the suppressed race in a society of capitalism. Willing to experience more about them he climbs down into the underworld where he finds out that they are carnivores and extremely violent.

Now he suddenly realizes that the Eloi are just fat stock for the Morlocks.

Consequently, the TT and Weena are searching for weapons to break into the

pedestal where the Morlocks keep the Time machine.

In an old museum which tells the TT that there must have been a cultured society

in former times, they find a lever (which the TT breaks of a machine), matches,