Source plot synopsis — includes the ending
In 1895, a Victorian Englishman, identified only as the Time Traveller, tells his weekly dinner guests that he has an experimental verification of a machine that can travel through time. He shows them a small model, and they watch it disappear. He claims to have a full-scale machine nearly finished in his laboratory, in which a person could travel through time. At dinner the following week, a weary, bedraggled Traveller recounts to his guests what he experienced on his journey to the future.
In the new narrative, the Time Traveller goes into the future, observing things moving in quick motion around him. His house disappears and turns into a lush garden. The Traveller stops in A.D. 802,701, and meets the Eloi, a society of small, childlike humanoids. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet deteriorating buildings and adhere to a fruit-based diet. Efforts to communicate are hampered by their lacking curiosity or discipline. The Eloi appear happy and carefree but fear the dark, particularly moonless nights, and also the empty wells dotting the landscape. Contagious diseases, weeds, and fungi have been eliminated alongside apparently all birds and land animals. Most of human society and engineering have disappeared, replaced by a culture without possessions, family structures, or economy, leading the Traveller to conclude that communism has been achieved at last. He also theorizes that intelligence springs from necessity; with no real challenges facing the Eloi, they have devolved into weak and naïve creatures with no understanding of the world around them.
Returning to his arrival site, the Traveller finds his time machine missing. Having removed the levers, he is confident it has not travelled through time. Later, he encounters the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Deducing that they took his time machine, he explores one well that leads to the Morlocks' subterranean dwellings and discovers them operating the machinery that maintains Eloi's above-ground paradise. He realizes the Morlocks hunt the Eloi at night as food. The Traveller speculates that the human race diverged into two species: the favoured aristocracy has become the Eloi, and the servant class become the Morlocks.
Meanwhile, he rescues Eloi Weena from drowning, as the other Eloi are apathetic to her plight. The Traveller takes Weena with him on an expedition to "The Palace of Green Porcelain", a distant structure that is a derelict museum. Here, the Traveller finds fresh matches and fashions a crude weapon against Morlocks, whom he must fight to recover his machine. He plans to take Weena back to his own time to save her from the future world's horrors. Morlocks attack while they are resting in a forest, and Weena faints. The Traveller escapes when a small fire he left behind them to repel the Morlocks turns into a forest fire; Weena and the Morlocks are lost in the blaze.
The Morlocks open a Sphinx statue housing the machine as bait to capture the distraught Traveller, not understanding that he can use it to escape. He reattaches the levers before travelling further ahead to roughly 30 million years from his own time. There, he sees the last living things on a dying Earth: crab-like creatures wandering blood-red beaches chasing enormous butterflies, in a world covered in lichenoid vegetation. He continues jumping forward through time, seeing Earth's rotation cease and the sun grow larger, redder, and dimmer, and the world falling silent and freezing as the last living things die out.
Overwhelmed, he returns to his own time, arriving at the laboratory just three hours after he originally left. He arrives late to his own dinner party, whereupon, after eating, the Traveller relates his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two unusual white flowers Weena put in his pocket.
The original narrator relates that he returned to the Traveller's house the next day, finding him preparing for another journey and promising to return in a short time. After waiting for three years, however, the narrator says that the Traveller has not returned.
In the new narrative, the Time Traveller goes into the future, observing things moving in quick motion around him. His house disappears and turns into a lush garden. The Traveller stops in A.D. 802,701, and meets the Eloi, a society of small, childlike humanoids. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet deteriorating buildings and adhere to a fruit-based diet. Efforts to communicate are hampered by their lacking curiosity or discipline. The Eloi appear happy and carefree but fear the dark, particularly moonless nights, and also the empty wells dotting the landscape. Contagious diseases, weeds, and fungi have been eliminated alongside apparently all birds and land animals. Most of human society and engineering have disappeared, replaced by a culture without possessions, family structures, or economy, leading the Traveller to conclude that communism has been achieved at last. He also theorizes that intelligence springs from necessity; with no real challenges facing the Eloi, they have devolved into weak and naïve creatures with no understanding of the world around them.
Returning to his arrival site, the Traveller finds his time machine missing. Having removed the levers, he is confident it has not travelled through time. Later, he encounters the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Deducing that they took his time machine, he explores one well that leads to the Morlocks' subterranean dwellings and discovers them operating the machinery that maintains Eloi's above-ground paradise. He realizes the Morlocks hunt the Eloi at night as food. The Traveller speculates that the human race diverged into two species: the favoured aristocracy has become the Eloi, and the servant class become the Morlocks.
Meanwhile, he rescues Eloi Weena from drowning, as the other Eloi are apathetic to her plight. The Traveller takes Weena with him on an expedition to "The Palace of Green Porcelain", a distant structure that is a derelict museum. Here, the Traveller finds fresh matches and fashions a crude weapon against Morlocks, whom he must fight to recover his machine. He plans to take Weena back to his own time to save her from the future world's horrors. Morlocks attack while they are resting in a forest, and Weena faints. The Traveller escapes when a small fire he left behind them to repel the Morlocks turns into a forest fire; Weena and the Morlocks are lost in the blaze.
The Morlocks open a Sphinx statue housing the machine as bait to capture the distraught Traveller, not understanding that he can use it to escape. He reattaches the levers before travelling further ahead to roughly 30 million years from his own time. There, he sees the last living things on a dying Earth: crab-like creatures wandering blood-red beaches chasing enormous butterflies, in a world covered in lichenoid vegetation. He continues jumping forward through time, seeing Earth's rotation cease and the sun grow larger, redder, and dimmer, and the world falling silent and freezing as the last living things die out.
Overwhelmed, he returns to his own time, arriving at the laboratory just three hours after he originally left. He arrives late to his own dinner party, whereupon, after eating, the Traveller relates his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two unusual white flowers Weena put in his pocket.
The original narrator relates that he returned to the Traveller's house the next day, finding him preparing for another journey and promising to return in a short time. After waiting for three years, however, the narrator says that the Traveller has not returned.
Sources and content license
Source and revision history ↗ · Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, The Time Machine. Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license