Bill’s Comments (group member since Mar 13, 2011)

Bill’s comments from the Utopian and Dystopian Reading Group group.

In my understanding Wells was a socialist, and I think the book should be examined from that point of view. He seems to be warning that the antagonism of owners and workers that he saw in 19th century capitalist society would become so extreme that the two groups would become separate species at some far-off time in the future. After all, he sets the book, as I remember, about 800,000 from now; knowledge at the time about the evolution of man was very primitive, but that probably wasn't a bad guess about how long it would take. He saw both species, the Eloi and the Morlocks, as degenerative: the Eloi were weak and childlike, and the Mordocks were predatory and unable to endure light. He recognizes the necessity of struggle for humanity, because he attributes the weakness of the Eloi to their dependence on the labor of the Morlocks. This seems contradictory to me: socialists usually look to the elimination of struggle between classes, but he sees that struggle in some form is necessary.