Resumo de The Time Machine

The Time Machine

The Time Machine can be said to be a social critique of England projected into a distant future by H.G.Wells. Rapid growth in technology, education, and capital had launched the Industrial Revolution in the 17th- and 18th-centuries, and by the late 19th-century of The Time Traveler, England was a leading force in the new economy: while industrialists reveled in their unbounded wealth, droves of men, women, and young children toiled long hours for meager wages in dirty, smoke-filled factories.
H.G.Wells mainly targets Darwin?s theory of evolution through this novel. Charles Darwin had argued that only those species survived which were considered to be the fittest. The weak species gradually disintegrated and then disappeared or even if they survived they were considered to be inferior. In Machine, Wells shows first how far human evolution will go if capitalism continues unhampered: mankind will split into two distinct species, the ruling class and the working class. Furthermore, the advancements of civilization will not necessarily advance the species. Even though man may evolve to adapt to his environment, the changing environment itself may make that evolution ultimately undesirable.
The story begins with the Time Traveler who announces to a group of people including the narrator that he had invented a machine that could travel with time. He tells his experiences of time traveling thus.
The traveler starts his strange journey with time and lands in a garden. He sees a statue of a White Sphinx. He notices robed figures in a nearby house who are watching him. One approaches him. The creature is small and strikes the Time Traveler as beautiful but frail. The creature speaks in a "strange tongue" to two other creatures that have followed him. When they feel the Time Machine, he adjusts the levers to render it inoperable. The Time Traveler is stunned to think these creatures from 802,701 AD could be fools. The creatures bring him to a huge nearby building, where they invite him to devour exotic fruit with them. At first, he explains, he was confused by the strange fruits and flowers he saw, but he later came to understand their significance. He tries to learn their language. On his third day, the Time Traveler saves a young female creature from drowning in a river. Her name is Weena, and she soon follows him around like a puppy, giving him flowers, and grows distressed when she cannot keep up with his explorations and is left behind. The Time Traveler learns that her only fear is of the dark, and that after dark, the creatures sleep only inside in groups. Still, the TimeTraveller continues to sleep away from the groups, eventually with Weena. He learns that his Time Machine had been missing and learns that it was in a bronze pedestal and starts to make a search for it. The Time Traveler treks with Weena through the woods, hoping to reach the White Sphinx. They gather sticks for a fire that night. At the White Sphinx, he is surprised to find the bronze pedestal has been opened, and the Time Machine is inside. He throws away his weapon and goes inside. Suddenly, the bronze panels close up, and the Time Traveler is trapped. The Morlocks laugh as they approach him. The Time Traveler feels safe, knowing he has only to reattach the levers on the machine to make his exit. However, his matches require a box to light. In the darkness, he fights them as he gets into the machine's saddle and reattaches the levers. Finally, he pulls a lever and disappears.
Later he notices that due to his haste he accidentally sent himself into the future, rather than the past. Though he speeds up through time, the alternation of day and night slows down, as does the passage of the sun. Finally, the sun ceases to rise and set, and the earth rests with one side facing it. The Time Traveler stops the Time Machine. He observes the reddish landscape and the moss-like vegetation everywhere. There is no wind, the water of the sea barely moves,and the air is rarefied. He sees a huge, crab-like thing crawling toward him. The Time Traveler pulls his machine's lever and watches more of the giant crabs crawl along the beach as he shoots forward through time. The sun grows larger and duller. After thirty million years, all life save the green vegetation ceases to exist, and it starts to snow. The Time Traveler stops the machine. He feels sick and confused and incapable of facing the return journey. He sees a black creature crawl out from the sea, and his fear of remaining in this environment compels him to climb back into the Time Machine. Later he narrates his experience of traveling to the present. None of the listeners believe him except the narrator. The narrator asks him to prove which he gladly agrees and asks him to meet him the next day. When the narrator arrives at his laboratory the next day he finds neither the Time Traveler nor the Time machine. He understands that the Time Traveler had gone with time once again.

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