In groups discuss the following questions:

1. The issue of credibility comes up at the outset of The Time Machine. How does the Time Traveller attempt to give credibility to his ideas at the beginning, and what devices throughout does the character use to make the time-travel premise believable for his audience? What techniques or ideas does Wells use to make the premise credible for his readers?

2. Throughout the novel, the only character named is Weena. Each of the Time Traveller’s companions is referred to by either first initial or occupation, and the narrator’s identity is not even disclosed until the book’s conclusion. Why might Wells have used this technique? Is the fact that Weena is the only character acknowledged by name meaningful to the book?

3. Written at a time of rapid economic growth and industrialization in England, The Time Machine is renowned as a work of social criticism. It is known that Wells’s own political beliefs were leftist. Describe the relationship between the species of the future, the Eloi and the Morlocks. How might The Time Machine, in its depiction of the future and the struggle between these species, be a metaphor and prophecy for the age in which Wells was living?

4. It is noteworthy that the Time Traveller comments so often on the year in the future to which he traveled, 802,701. Why was it necessary for Wells’s to set his story so far in the future? Does the extremity of the setting make the novel more or less relevant as a work of social criticism?

5. The Time Machine is a work laden with symbolism. The Palace of Green Porcelain stands out as having significant meaning in terms of both the plot and the social commentary it affords. What is the relevance of the palace in the year 802,701, what is it in the Time Traveller’s age, and how does the palace figure into the plot? While in the Palace of Green Porcelain, the Time Traveller chooses a few “weapons.” What are they and how does he use them? It is interesting that the matches he selects figure the most prominently into the story. Is the importance of fire in the far distant future ironic? Find, describe, and discuss other symbols that appear over the course of the novel.

6. While the story takes place far in the future, the hero of the story, a civilized British scientist, experiences profoundly primitive emotions over the course of the story. At what points in the book is it evident that the Time Traveller is regressing to a primitive state? What does this character development say about “time travel,” in scientific, evolutionary, and emotional terms?