What is the main message of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells?

I think there are several messages in this story that can be classified as the main message. I definitely think the story contains a warning about technology. I teach a media studies class to high school seniors, and the class examines something called "The Myth of Technology as Protector and Savior." In short, this idea states that technology is by definition beneficial. I think much of the general population believes this, and I think this has helped to propel the pace of our technology developments in the last 100 years or so. What's interesting is how many science fiction writers warn against such assumptions. The Time Machine is a story that does this. Through the Eloi and Morlocks, Wells shows readers that technology could eventually result in the undoing of society and mankind. The book shows us that while technologies can lead to great progress, they can also lead to violence and intellectual stagnation.

I believe a second main message of the book is a message about social class and inequality. Again, the relationship between the Morlocks and the Eloi is used to convey this message. The class distinction between these two groups is stark, and Wells uses it to point out the inequalities that he saw in Victorian England. Wells's story takes the real world social issue to a terrifying conclusion by showing that perhaps it is leading to the development of two completely different human species. Perhaps that is not a problem for many, but Wells creates the two groups in such a way as to show readers that each group ended up having the worst characteristics of each initial group.

As is often the case with Wells, one of the dominant themes of this novel is the use—or rather, abuse—of science and technology. Scientific and technological progress are all well and good, but Wells is at pains to point out that they also have a dark underside. At first, The Time Traveler thinks that the Eloi have been liberated by technology, free to pursue a life of ease and comfort. However, he soon comes to realize that there is another side to the story. Not only has technology not been used to liberate the Morlocks, it has also rendered the Eloi apathetic and vulnerable to being eaten by the Morlocks.

The Victorian era was a time of rapid scientific and technological development. Belief in progress was almost universal. What Wells is trying to do in The Time Machine, however, is to urge people to take time to see what is going on around them and to see where all this astonishing progress might lead. Wells is not someone who wants to just turn the clock back to a simpler, more primitive past, and he is not opposed to scientific progress in principle. He just wants his Victorian audience to be aware of its potentially negative and destructive consequences. He is especially concerned that if things continue on their present course, then humankind will experience a kind of evolution in reverse; we will be reduced to a state of tranquilized contentment like the Eloi, and we will lose what is distinctively human in the process.

What is the theme of The Time Machine?

There are several themes tied together across The Time Machine. There's a strong focus on science and scientific theory, along with the (from a geological perspective) ephemeral nature of human existence: human existence and evolution is not static, and human beings have no special destiny. In the distant future, modern humanity has been entirely replaced, and we see instead the world of the Elois and the Morlocks.

Combined with these ideas of evolution is a very strong focus on the class system (and a criticism of it). There is a sense by which the Morlocks and the Eloi represent a vision of evolution where biology has come to reflect a nightmarish vision of the industrial class structure. (And note the degree to which both groups have been diminished in the process—in the Morlocks, we see the working class reduced to monstrous, subterranean creatures, whereas in the Eloi, the upper classes have been reduced to a state of infantile helplessness.) From this perspective, one could argue that the class structure is debilitating for all its participants—upper and working class alike.

At the same time, it's interesting to note that this nightmarish future is not necessarily the greatest nightmare that the Time Traveler runs across, for this world too is ephemeral, just as much as the world of modern humanity proves to be. The Time Traveler moves even further into the future, to a thoroughly alien world inhabited by giant crabs and "a thing that looked like a huge white butterfly." From here, he travels further, watching as the sun approaches its death. In these scenes in particular, we really see how small and ephemeral the full scope of human history (along with all its accomplishments) truly is when even the Earth and the Sun are revealed as finite and approaching their end.

One of the overall themes of the Time Machine as well as many literary works of the time, is the amazing struggle and conflict between classes.  In the novel, the ideas of the Eloi are at first seen as enlightened and the narrator expects that he has come across the first society to have overcome those class barriers.  Of course later he learns he was just not seeing things clearly and the same conflicts are still there and just as divisive as ever.

Another was the struggle between science and in some ways morality, the idea that one should be striving to find and learn and discover everything possible and sometimes ignoring or not thinking carefully about the consequences.

In The Time Machine, as elsewhere in his work, Wells shows himself to be somewhat ambiguous about the nature of technology. Here we are presented with both the good and bad sides of technological progress and left to make up our own minds whether technology is, on the whole, positive or negative.

The positive consequences of technology are not hard to spot in the book. The eponymous time machine is a truly remarkable invention; it is a technological breakthrough that, in allowing us to travel to different time dimensions, opens up vast new vistas of opportunity for humankind.

On the other hand, the time machine is far from being an unalloyed good. Though it can take us to so many different cultures and civilizations it can't prevent us from being stranded in them or from being quite literally stuck in the past or trapped in the future.

Speaking about technology in general, it's clear that it hasn't done any favors for the Morlocks, a race of slave-workers modeled closely on the British proletariat of the late Victorian era. Although the Morlocks are more technologically advanced than the Eloi, it's the Eloi who have the whip-hand over them.

The Eloi are based on the Victorian upper-classes, whose wealth and leisure are only possible due to the sweat and hard toil of a race of workers. It is they, and not the technologically superior Morlocks, who derive the real benefit from technological development.