Steven Thomson

The full text of 'The Time Machine' is available here, for anyone who wants to read it - The Time Machine







‘The Time Machine’, by H G Wells, is a novel with a dramatic and unexpected ending, one which was created using unusual methods of narration and characterisation. This essay will explain how the dramatic effect was achieved with reference to the aforementioned methods.


The opening chapter of ‘The Time Machine’ begins with the narrator talking directly to the reader, introducing the character of ‘the Time Traveller’ and his intention to travel through time. At this point, the only character with a name is one of the associates present at the meeting, an ‘argumentative man with red hair’ known as Filby; all others present are referred to by their job titles (‘Medical Man’, ‘Provincial Mayor’, ‘the Psychologist’) only. No information is given by the narrator about the characters, and only their words and actions during the meeting are available to the reader to formulate opinions on these characters. This style of narration continues up until the third chapter, with the narrator’s thoughts visible to the reader, and descriptions of peoples’ actions as they go about their business.


At this point, the narrator is sitting in the Time Traveller’s house, waiting for him to begin his tale. From this point, until the twelfth chapter where this story ends, and other than a brief moment in the seventh chapter where the Time Traveller provides his listeners with what he believes to be proof, the narrator simply relays the words of the Time Traveller to the reader; no extraneous thoughts or actions are present, and the text presented to the reader is solely comprised of the Time Traveller’s words, his description of what he said, how he felt, what he did and what he saw during the eight days he had lived while the others in the room had traversed a mere few hours. During this section, the narrator is still talking to the reader, and the Time Traveller is talking to the narrator. Since this section is so long, however, and without anything to act as a reminder of the existence of the narrator, the reader inevitably forgets, and thinks of the Time Traveller as narrating the tale, and talking directly to the reader. When the Time Traveller finishes telling his tale, the narrator reverts back to conveying his own thoughts to the reader, and then, almost without warning, the book ends, leaving the reader with very little time in which to remember that the narrator, not the Time Traveller, is the one telling the tale, and enables the ending to catch the reader unawares; after hearing the Time Traveller’s tale in its entirety told from the perspective of the Time Traveller himself, the last thing the reader expects is for the ending to reveal that the Time Traveller’s fate is unknown, and that he ‘vanished three years ago. And, as everybody knows now, he never returned’.


Having so casually revealed (or not, depending on the point of view the reader chooses to adopt with reference to the subject matter, which is very much an individual preference) the fate of the Time Traveller, the narrator closes the novel with a brief epilogue, during which he influences the reader’s perceptions with some of his own opinions and questions on the fate of the Time Traveller, and his own disposition towards the idea of travelling through time. It is at this point that the reader glimpses the narrator’s personality; before this point in the novel, the narrator merely relayed the words and actions of others to the reader, seldom pausing to relay his own philosophical views, and instead choosing simply to describe the actions happening in the room around him, describing the opinions of other listeners present in the room and often neglecting to inform the reader of his own opinions, and so there is not a great deal of evidence on which to base any assumptions about his personality. In contrast, the Time Traveller himself provides much of the evidence needed to make assumptions about his personality through the way he tells his tale, and the actions and thoughts he describes throughout. Together with the brief descriptions and inferred information about him, the Time Traveller’s own tale helps to build up his character substantially, as the narrative makes it seem as though the Time Traveller is talking directly to the reader during the section where he tells of his experience; this provides a connection with the reader, and the reader sympathises with the Time Traveller, and wants him to emerge triumphant, and his obvious talent and intelligence to receive the recognition that it deserves. Instead, his tale is ridiculed by a series of disturbed men who would rather live a lie than put in the requisite effort to progress their understanding of the truth; the reader sympathises with the Time Traveller as his hard work is rejected, again strengthening the bond between the Time Traveller and the reader. This sense of sympathising with him is helped by the narrator’s own opinion that the story was plausible, subtly influencing the reader to believe the same thing.


In conclusion, the ending takes the reader by surprise, and the sense of having the Time Traveller tell the story is heightened by the lack of details given about the extraneous characters, such as the Editor, and the Journalist; the only character whose personality is explored in any great detail is the Time Traveller, and as such, the only character who the reader feels any form of emotional bond with is the Time Traveller; leaving his fate unknown is a cliffhanger of sorts, and is a completely unexpected twist to a tale in a world in which the hero/heroine almost always surmounts insurmountable odds with seemingly no effort required on their part. It’s far from predictable, and provides a genuinely shocking twist to the tale that provokes thought on the reader’s part, and raises all sorts of questions about the nature of that elusive illusion known as time, as well as delivering both a message and a warning of the future; even in a future where humans no longer exist, and ‘when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.’