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H.G. Wells' The Time Machine Essay examples

Decent Essays

When the time traveler thought of the future he made assumptions that would suggest that the in the future, society would act in a progressive manner. He believed that society would be free of disease, that the human species would be very advanced compared to the humans in his time, and that the human beings in this society would not know fear because of their advances in technology. These assumptions are soon proven false early on when the time traveler thought he “…had built the time machine in vain” (21). The Sphinx puts pressure on a progressive time by suggesting that society does not progress all the time but will eventually regress. When the time traveler notices that the Sphinx, “was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted …show more content…

Relying on technology becomes associated with this utopian society, and certain problems such as laziness can arise because of this. Laziness as a result of dependency on technology proves to be fatal. An example of this would be when one thinks about the Sphinx’s riddle. At first, society finds the answer to the riddle through one specific way of thinking and arriving at that answer, but because of technology anything originally learned can then be referenced so that eliminates the need to remember it. Now if someone who comes from a society that is dependent on technology is asked this riddle, he will have no way of answering the question because he would first need to look at technology for the answer. Wells suggests that this shows that after arriving to a utopian state, a society dependent on technology can have a reduced ability to think. When the time traveler first entered this society in the future, the first thing he noticed was the Sphinx that had its wings “…spread so it seemed to hover” (18). There are other instances in the story where an idea is seen as just floating or hovering into the time traveler’s mind. While he is thinking about how the Eloi have become reacquainted with fear “… suddenly there came into my head the memory of meat I had seen in the Underworld. It seemed odd how it floated into my mind…”(49). This suggests that the time traveler is

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