A Post-Humanist Analysis of 'The Time Machine'

Posthumanism raises the question “What makes us human?” (Herbrechter, 2013).

Descartes (1637/2017) believed to have found what it means to be human. The philosopher argued that reason is the only thing that makes us human and separates us from the “brutes”. Descartes also took God from the Centre of our ideals and switched it for Humans, putting all the attention on man ‘I think, therefore I am’ (Descartes, 1637/2017). Reason not only grants the subject the power of judgement; it also helps ‘us’ to tell the difference between the human and the non-human. We can then assure that only Humans have the capacity for rational thought and that reason is a property of the mind that links our race.

Posthumanism tests this old notion that shows how the established concept of “Man” creates hierarchies in our society that diminish people of colour, women, queer, and disabled people, believing these are less than human (Badmington, 2000). In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was born. It is now a document that many follow, and we can make sure that there is, by that, a basic human essence, even though many posthumanists are highly critical of this idea.

The Time Machine (1895/2017) converts this sense of redemption by the humankind in the future. This is noticeable when the Time Traveller admits that he lost all his interest in the creatures from the moment he arrived in the future and noticed how ugly those creatures were.

“I saw some further peculiarities in their Dresden-china type of prettiness. (…) This may seem egotism on my part — I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the interest I might have expected in them.” (Wells, 1895/2017, p. 26). “You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything.” (Wells, 2017, p.26)

The text suggests we need a new logic to the current one which focuses on western principals, even though it does not present a clue of what that logic could be.

In the very far future, the Time Traveller uses only negative expressions to refer to what he sees around him and only refers to the moving things as “some black object”, “the moving thing”, “a round thing” and “it” (Wells, 2017, p. 95-96). For him, this future was unthinkable of before entering the machine for the first time. This happens because, like Transhumanism suggests, we always believe that the future will be an improvement of the current state and never a demotion. Then, when the Time Traveller sees a world without technology, or life as he knows it, but instead creatures that seem inferior to him, he gets extremely inconsolable with this idea. For him, this situation completely crushes all he was hoping for when building the machine.

The Eloi and the Morlocks – Are they human?

While H. G. Wells makes it clear that both these groups descended from humans, one of the most intriguing questions that The Time Machine raises is that if we can consider the Eloi and the Morlocks to also be human.

The Time Traveller, throughout the text, attempts to understand how different these creatures are from humans, which we consider to be from the time he has travelled, the end of the 19th century. The reader must attempt to look for this variation also, although we can now, more than 120 years later, have a unique perspective on this matter. Depending on distinct attributes along the lines of intelligence and bodily resemblances, both the Eloi and the Morlocks can be considered human or inhuman since this definition falls in an open category that cannot be strictly answered.

Considering what has been stated, we might attempt to provide a definition of what is human from examining the Time Traveller and how he explains what he has seen to his companions. When the main character first travels to the future, what we later find out is the year 802,701, he sees an Eloi running towards him and describes it as a “slight creature”. It was only in the next chapter that the time traveller starts addressing the Eloi as people (Wells, 1895/2017, p. 23-27).

In the first instances of knowing the Eloi, the time traveller describes them on page 26 as “slight”, “four feet high” with simple clothes, “beautiful and graceful” with a “sweet” language. From these first descriptions, it seems like the time traveller perhaps considers bodily appearance to be the most important characteristic that defines humans.

Unlike the time traveller, most would not answer the same way when asked for the characteristics that define humans and separates us from other creatures. Most would now say that it is mind, perhaps culture and experiences that makes us who we are. The ideal would be to find a definition for human that reaches greater depth than just physical characteristics that we could all agree to.

Weena, in some way, represents the Eloi in this novel. She is not very intelligent, she gets easily tired, and she fears the dark. But Weena is still quite different from other Eloi. She shows gratitude and affection for the Time Traveller. She gets amused by matches. She cries, just like the Time Traveller. She is also childish and gets amused by matches. Although Weena is an Eloi, she has some resembles with the Time Traveller and, by consequence, humans. This shows that some things change but others do not, which raises the question: is she a human?

Weena’s death tells us a lot about the way the time traveller sees these creatures. He feels relieved by thinking that the fire got to her before the Morlocks did, he shows compassion in the moment of her death as, I would say, anyone would fall for their pets. He rescues her every time she gets herself into dangerous situations, but I believe the time traveller saw Weena as a friend even though I do not think he saw her as an equal but as less than him.

When the time traveller meets the Morlocks, curiously enough, he describes them as creatures and never switches to recognize them as people even though they maintain a similar stature to what we view as human stature (Wells, 1895/2017, p.56). For this reason, the time traveller shows himself to be inconsistent in his views by considering the Eloi to be people based on their physical similarities and not the Morlocks.

If we consider Herbrechter reflexion: “Is the human in fact human because of its ‘nature’ or its culture?” (Herbrechter, 2013, p.8), we can question the humanity of both the Eloi and the Morlocks sense neither of them shows kindness nor empathy: as Weena is drowning in the river, the Eloi ignore her suffering and do not come for her to help and the Morlocks choose to at the Eloi without showing any sense of remorse or sorrow. (Wells, 1895/2017, p. 46).

To sum up everything that has been stated so far, the purpose of this essay was to apply post humanist ideals to The Time Machine. This novel clearly conveys a creative preoccupation with the idea of defining what is human. Besides that, it can also raise questions in everyone’s minds about what the future holds for us, humans.

We can conclude that not everyone agrees as if we can or not consider the Eloi and the Morlocks human. I believe that we cannot. For me, what makes us human is emotive intelligence, which is mostly recognized as empathy and compassion, and both these set of creatures showed they do not have it.

References:

Badmington, Neil. (2000). Posthumanism. (1st ed.). Palgrave.

Descartes, R. (2017). Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting one’s Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. (eBook). Jonathan Bennett. (Original work published 1637)

Herbrechter, Stefan. (2013). Posthumanism: A Critical Analysis. (1st ed.). Bloomsbury.

Wells, H.G.. (2017) The Time Machine (eBook). ProQuest Ebook Central.

This essay was submitted on April 30th 2021 by Lara Soares for the module 'Approaches to Literature for BA English' as part of my degree English and Creative Writing BA.

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