In The Time Machine the Time Traveller's description of the future society of the Eloi alludes to the ancient Greek myth of the lotus-eaters, a society of people who lived on the isle of Lotus and ate the plant's fruit, causing them to forget their past lives and exist in a state of constant leisure and contentment:
Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy that with us is strength, would become weakness.
In the novel, the Time Traveller encounters the Eloi, a seemingly carefree and indolent society living in the far future, who seem to have lost their drive and ambition:
A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of interest.
The Eloi are portrayed as a gentle and attractive people, but they are also passive, indecisive, and lack the drive and ambition that characterized humanity in the past. This allusion to the Lotus-Eaters is meant to suggest that a life of ease and comfort can lead to complacency, boredom, and ultimately the loss of the qualities that make us human. By contrast, the Time Traveller represents the spirit of adventure, discovery, and progress, and his encounter with the Eloi is a warning about the dangers of a society that has lost its way and become too focused on pleasure and ease.
The Lotus-eater allusion highlights the importance of struggle and adversity in shaping character and driving progress. In the ancient Greek myth, it was only when the Lotus-eaters were forced to leave the island and face challenges again that they were able to regain their individuality and purpose in life. Similarly, the Time Traveller's journey into the future is a reminder that progress and innovation often come from overcoming difficulties and facing challenges, rather than from living a life of ease. The Time Traveller's encounter with the Eloi is a warning against a society that has lost its way and become complacent, and serves as a cautionary tale about the importance of maintaining one's individuality and purpose in life.
The Time Machine is part of a lineage of utopian fiction novels and alludes to them often. Utopian fiction was a popular genre in the late 1800s, as civilization was undergoing dramatic change and the possibility of societal reconstruction and improvement was emerging. Two novels that may have influenced Wells are Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888), which revolves around a utopia in which class issues are resolved, and William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), in which work and labor have become enjoyable.
H.G. Wells alludes to his peers' utopian fiction in his reference to a “cicerone,” a type of guide who walks the narrator through the utopian world in which he finds himself, and a figure present in many canonized works of utopian fiction. The Traveller states:
I had no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopian books.
Here, Wells demonstrates his explicit divergence from the utopian tradition from which he emerges. He complicates the utopian structure by infusing his narrative with scientific individualism. That is, his narrator has no guide to lead him through the new world; instead, he relies on his scientific training and rational faculties to make sense of his environment, creating "logical conclusions" and "theories" based on the evidence he observes.
In H.G. Wells's novel, the Eloi race is first depicted as a utopian society devoid of conflict, in which everyone lives in harmony. But their civilization is quickly revealed to be a false utopia, as the Eloi, reduced by self-directed evolution to "cattle"-like simplicity, are being preyed upon by the Morlocks.
The society of the Eloi is presented as similar to the one described in Looking Backward, in which the citizens live in a state of ubiquitous leisure and freedom from violence or crime, and consequently have lost their desire to probe or understand the world.
This allusion serves to draw parallels between the two novels and confront the idealistic vision of a perfect socialist society, demonstrating how the attempt to eliminate all strife and struggle in a society may actually lead to its downfall.
