H G Wells was cynical of the Victorian class system and thoroughly disapproved of the way people were segregated, according to their wealth. Wells disagreed with England’s capitalist views, as he himself was a socialist. His novel The Time Machine is primarily a social critique of Victorian England projected into the distant future. He has taken segregation to its extremes and shows how far human evolution will go if capitalism continues unhindered.
On travelling to the future he finds that this new world is not what he expected, as he feels vulnerable and ‘naked in a strange world.’ (Page 26) This panic then quickly transforms into frenzy as he then meets the Eloi who were all that he despised, creatures who were frail, had lost manliness and lost interest in the world. The Eloi were as he describes a ‘fragile thing out of futurity’ (Page 28) mainly due to their consumptive beauty and their very frail and pale features. This is what is called ‘Dresden china’ (Page 29) linking the creatures back to delicate china dolls known for their perfect facial features. This is how the upper class Victorians would behave as they strived to achieve beauty such as the Eloi posses. When he first saw them, they had appeared in rich soft robes, which are then later described, as purple. They are portrayed as these very godly, rich upper class characters and it is clear to the reader that these creatures were portraying the Victorian upper classes as purple, in the Nineteenth Century was a very expensive colour.
Wells has also subtly implied his views of communism amongst the Eloi, as they are all ‘uniformly curly’ (Page 29) personifying Wells’ views that we should all be the same. Later this is described, as a ‘utopia’ (Page 63), which show...
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...t the area has become rural. There is more countryside than in the Victorian Times showing how industry has regressed. In addition, when the time traveller realises where they were stood he says ‘Clearly … stood among the ruins’ (Page 83). This is a metaphor showing the ruins of intelligence as the Eloi showed no desire to pursue intelligence.
The themes of The Time Machine still relate to modern times however the distinction between classes is more subtle than the Nineteenth Century. The distinction between the classes nowadays is ever so small as we all live like the Morlocks who have work in order to survive. However the discrimination between classes is less prominent than in the Nineteenth Century. Nowadays classes are not determined by which family you are born into, it is more about the kind of job you have, your wealth and your social status in society.
The novel’s use of contrast between East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of Ashes begins to explore the differences between social classes. East Egg houses the most wealthy and aristocratic members of the nearby area. It contains many “white palaces” (Fitzgerald 10) that are quite “fashionable” (Fitzgerald 10). This description paints an image of purity and untouched standards of wealth that are translated into the book’s time period. Due to the pristineness of the village, the homes “[glitter] along the water,” (10) further supporting the idyllic qualities East Egg appears to have. West Egg, on the contrary, is home to people of near equal affluence, but of less social establishment. It is described by the narrator as “less fashionable,” (Fitzgerald
In America, the late 19th Century was known as the Victorian Era. It was a time when pro-private upper class culture dominated the nation, a time of liberation from the burden of the past and a time when the development of science and technology flourished. The Victorians believed that the advancement in science and technology served as a mean for protection, and could bring in an abundant of wealth and power, something they desired. The middle-class admired those from the upper-class, as they imitated the lives of the wealthy families. It was a period of competition and the survival of the fitness for the Victorians. While these neighbors, friends and families competed against each other for wealth, there was competition between workers and machineries in the cities, as labor was gradually being replaced by modern technology.
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells was an intriguing and exciting book about a Time Traveller and his journey’s through time. In this book, the Traveller explained to a group of men who were discussing the nature of time that time was the fourth dimension; just like the three dimensions of space: length, width and height. The Traveller argued that since time was a dimension, then it stood to reason that people should be able to move along the time continuum, into the past or the future. Most of the men do not seem to believe the Traveller or his theory, but agreed that they would like to travel in time, and talked about what they would do if they could. To illustrate his point, the Time Traveller went and got a model of his time machine from his laboratory to demonstrate and later returned to detail the places, things and people he had seen in his travels with his working Time Machine. Throughout the story, the Time Traveller faced setbacks and challenges, but the book outlined how he persevered and pointed to the future mankind faced.
H.G. Wells was a prolific writer. In his book The Time Machine, he takes his readers on a journey into a future that is vastly different than they might have expected. During Well's lifetime, England was marked by distinct class differences, the working class and the idle rich. It is not surprising that in his writings Well's Marxist attitude comes through. This is especially seen in his fascination about the class division between the Eloi and the Morlocks, the effect capitalism has on the future, and the advancement of the human
All in all Wells was trying to warn us that the apocalypse or end of
The main characters in The Time Machine were The Time Traveler, Weena (an Eloi who
By the example of Eloi and Morlocks, he warns of Capitalism and its consequences to mankind. This vision which is presented in “The Time Machine” shows or rather forecasts the results of the social split between the leisurely wealthy upper class and the working class, especially in the Victorian England.
George Gilliam Marx/More Comparative Essay English 215 In both Thomas More’s Utopia and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, we see the authors portray two different visions of an improved reality in which all citizens are on an equal plane with one another. Both works stem from the authors’ own grievances regarding the ‘status quo’, and seek to provoke serious thought and (in Marx’s case) action about the existing state of affairs in their respective times. The context of both of these works is quite important when considering the substance of Utopia and the Communist Manifesto – Thomas More lived in a time when Europe’s government was based on Feudalism, meaning royal families and rich nobles had the overwhelming majority of power. Marx lived during the Industrial Revolution, when class antagonisms became rather aggressive due to the major gap between rich and poor (Bourgeois and Proletariat) as a result of the greater need for a large number of workers and the subsequent wealthy minority. Utopia and the Communist Manifesto are similar in the way that they propose, or at least stir, visions of major changes in ideology, but both have a number of key differences as well.
The 19th century was a time of massive change socially, politically and scientifically. This time saw the rise of Imperialism and of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, seeing massive changes in the way industry was run. Also during this time the literary movements of Romanticism and Victorianism emerged. Romanticism dealt with the issues of reality versus illusion, childhood and man versus nature. The first book I will examine in this essay, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, comes from this literary period and focuses on the man versus nature theme, namely the theme of scientific development and it’s contrast to nature. The second book I will look at in this essay comes from the Victorian period of the 19th century. This period saw the rise of the Industrial Revolution and of huge social and political change. Hard Times by Charles Dickens deals with these issues very closely, focussing mainly on the rise of industry in Britain and its effects on the people of Britain. Both of these novels challenge the social, political and scientific developments of the 19th century, namely the advent of science and technology.
The valley is described as a “desolate” place where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens”. (21) Ashes that dominate the area take the shape of natural greenery. The term “grotesque gardens” uses alliteration, with juxtaposition; to highlight the odd pairing of ashes and greenery. Ashes are associated with death while ridges and “gardens” represent the potential to flourish and grow in the promise and ideal of equality as in “the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” (143) The trees that once stood here were able to speak to man’s dreams, which allude to America, the land able to speak to man’s dreams and capacity for wonder. All this is replaced by grey ash that suffocates the inhabitants, restricting them to their social class. This presents a bleak image of hopelessness that surrounds the valley.
“The ‘Valley of Ashes’.symbolizes the human situation in an age of chaos. It is ‘a certain desolate area of land’ in which ‘ash-grey men’ swarm dimly, stirring up ‘an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.’” (Dyson 113). Nick thinks of the place as “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens” (Fitzgerald 23). And that is exactly what it is, since it’s a barren land of human waste.
dream and what could happen in the end of that dream. He died on the
Goldsmith’s speaker begins nostalgically for the “loveliest village of the plain,” (1) by listing the town’s virtues which include “The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church [.]” (11-12) Goldsmith uses this imagery to contrast the current state of the village, he goes on to say that “These were thy charms—But all these charms are fled.” (34) Here, the speaker urges readers to admonish the loss of the village’s charms by destroying the imagery created by the first 33 lines. He continues the description of the land as “forlorn” (76), but while the villagers were forced to abandon the area, the speaker’s nostalgia implies that he chose to leave. This nostalgia implies that the speaker’s depiction of the village could be highly romanticized. The speaker likens the loss of the village with a much greater problem, “The country blooms—a garden, and a grave.” (302) He suggests that this is not an isolated problem, but an epidemic that is happening all over the country. The village is lost to make room for a garden and a grave; the first belongs to the nobility and the later to the peasant. His portrayal of the New World supports th...
The Victorian era was more about social class and the economy; on the other hand, the Modern Literature was about showing what the world really looked like. Each era wanted to make a change in the world, they wanted to make an impact on the readers. Therefore, they wrote about politics, gender equality, economics, and social class. The Victorian age was from 1837 to 1901, it was a time of change during the ruling of Queen Victoria. The Modern Literature era also known as the twentieth century and after was from 1910 's to 2000 's in which increased popularity in literature due to the increasing of industrialization and globalization. Both of these eras made an impact towards world of literature, they showed either how the world was really like or they showed how the economic and social class. They may be different eras but they still had a chance to impact the world with there themes, subjects, purposes, and