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Essay 1 Readings:  Questions for Discussion


Excerpt from H. G. Wells' The Time Machine


These discussion questions are designed to help you think
about the stories you have read.  If you wish,  you can answer
the discussion questions in your reading comments for Essay 2.
In this essay, you should compare two literary works.

You can also select ONE of the discussion questions to
serve as the focus for your Essay 1 Paper.

The novel The Time Machine contains symbolism,
a term used for stories that have persons, places, actions, events,
or objects, that in addition to its literal meaning, suggests a more
complex meaning or range of meaning.  James Joyce used
symbolism in his books, even in his more realist,early collection
Dubliners.  And the Eloy and Morlocks in H. G. Wells The
Time Machine have symbolic meaning, as well as literal.  You
can read more about symbolism in Literature: Reading, Reacting,
and Responding on pages 254-56.

In The Time Machine, we meet unfamiliar sights and sounds as
The Traveler hurtles ahead in time.  The final secene of hundreds of millions
of years in the future is vivid.  Below are some points about why this
scene seems so realistic, yet has a meaning beyond the storyline.

  • What did this shift in the environment mean in both literal
    and symbolic terms?  What other text makes a shift in the
    setting play a symbolic role?
  • How would the story have been different if it turned out that
    these were the delusion as of a feverish man?  What other text
    would be changed if it were rpoven to be a dream?
  • What might the giant butterflies symbolize or represent in
    the story?    What othe rtext has natural things as
    symbols?
  • Besides the gigantic butterflies, are there any other
    symbols?  Can you compare these with symbols in
    other texts we have read?  Do the writers use symbols
    for the same or for different purposes?

  • Compare and contrast the "making the familiar seem
    strange"  (moths and crabs) in this excerpt  with "The
    Metamorphosis " (Literature, pp. 388-403)       In both stories
    something familiar in the environment has gone very
    strange, indeed.


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