The story in one page
The Time Traveller invites a group of London professionals to witness his new invention, a device that treats time as a fourth dimension. He disappears, returning hours later disheveled and limping, with a story of a world eight hundred thousand years in the future. In this era, the elegant but lazy Eloi live in crumbling palaces, seemingly without toil. However, the Traveller soon discovers that the Eloi are merely cattle for the Morlocks — bleached, ape-like descendants of the working class who live underground and maintain the ancient machinery. After losing his machine and befriending an Eloi named Weena, he must brave the dark to retrieve his device and escape the inevitable end of the species.
Who's who
- The Time Traveller
An inventor with grey eyes and a recondite theory of geometry.
- Weena
A slight, four-foot-tall creature who develops a protective affection for the Traveller.
- The Morlocks
Pale, light-sensitive beings who inhabit the Underworld and hunt the Eloi.
- The Eloi
The frail, purple-tunicked descendants of the upper class who live in leisure.
- Filby
An argumentative dinner guest with red hair who doubts the machine.
What it's really about
- Social Stratification
- Class divide taken to its biological extreme.
- Entropy
- The inevitable cooling and death of the universe.
Why it's memorable
- The discovery of human-shaped shadows in the dark shafts of the Underworld.
- A giant crab-like creature crawling across a desolate beach under a bloated red sun.
The ending, explained
Spoilers — show the ending
The Traveller departs for a second journey and never returns, leaving behind only two shrivelled white flowers from the future as proof of his tale.
For your book club
- The irony of technological progress resulting in the total loss of human intelligence.
- The Victorian fear that labor and capital would eventually become two separate species.