The Time Machine 1

Study Guide Questions for Chapter One

If you are looking for the beginning of the study of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine then you can go HERE for a brief introduction. At the bottom of the introduction you will find the links to each section of the study guide as it becomes available. If you would like to see the growing list of available book studies available for free on this site you can go HERE. Enjoy!

Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find them in the Text)

Doubt

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. What is the setting in which the story begins?

2. What did the Time Traveller tell his guests they would have to accept at the outset of their conversation?

3. According to the Time Traveller, how many dimensions must a body have and what are those dimensions?

4. According to the Time Traveller, what is the single and only difference between time and the first three dimensions as far as our experience of them is concerned?

5. According to the Time Traveller, what do “scientific people…know very well?”

6. In what manner did the Time Traveller say that we all travel through time, albeit very briefly?

7. What did the Time Traveller tell the Young Man that he expected to “discover” about future society (economically speaking)?

8. How were the men situated as the Time Traveller was giving them a demonstration of his model time machine?

9. How did the various men react to the disappearance of the model time machine?

10. What explanation was offered about why the time machine, thought stationary in space, would not be able to be seen as it moved through time?

11. What did the Time Traveller show the men in his laboratory?

Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)

1. Why would an “after-dinner atmosphere” allow thoughts to run “gracefully free of the trammels of precision?” Why might freedom from precision be considered a good thing?

2. The Time Traveller said, “The geometry…they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.” Why might this claim be disconcerting (or even absurd) to the men at the dinner party?

3. Why did the Time Traveller think “duration” is also necessary to a thing’s existence?

4. What did the Time Traveller mean by saying, “our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter [Time] from the beginning to the end of our lives?”

5. What are some logical implications if the Time Traveller’s claim that a person’s “Four-dimensioned being…is a fixed and unalterable thing” turns out to be true?

6. What notion was the Time Traveller communicating when he said “We are always getting away from the present moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel down if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth’s surface?”

7. What is the irony of Filby’s two claims that the Time Traveller's claims were “against reason” and also “you can show me black is white by argument…but you will never convince me?”

8. Why might the Time Traveller have assumed future societies would be “communistic?” 

9. Why did the narrator take pains to discuss the lighting in the room and the positioning of the men prior to the Time Traveller’s demonstration with his model time machine?

10. The Time Traveller said, “You will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way unreal.” Why would part of the time machine model appear “unreal?” What is the significance of this?

11. Why would the psychologist, especially, want to show that he had not come “unhinged” as Wells puts it?

12. After the Time Traveller’s demonstration the Medical Man said, “It sounds plausible enough to-night,...but wait until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.” Why might the passage of time change their perspective?

13. What might be the significance of the reference to the Time Traveller showing them a “ghost” last Christmas?

Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)

1. The Time Traveller challenged the men’s conception of Geometry, conceptions that were held by civilized society at least as far back as Euclid (c. 325-265 B.C.). How should we handle it when a claim or objection is raised which challenges a long held belief? What are at least two mistakes that could be made when a well established conviction is challenged? When should we be willing to be dislodged from a well-established conviction and when should we be unwilling? Explain your answer thoughtfully.

2. The Time Traveller said, “You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.” Do you agree or disagree that mathematical concepts like points and lines (or even numbers) have no real existence? Is to be abstract to be unreal? Explain what you think and why.

3. Do you agree with the Time Traveller’s claim that “time is only a kind of space?” If so, why? If not, what else could it be?

4. Do you believe time travel is theoretically possible for human persons? If so, what does that imply about the nature of time itself? If not, why not? 

5. If you could travel either forward or backward in time, but only one way and one time, which would you choose and why?

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. Read Colossians 1:15-20. What are the theological implications of this passage as it relates to the Time Traveller’s claims about the existence or non-existence of mathematical objects like points, lines, etc. 

2. Genesis 1:1 tells us, “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.” Aristotle defined time as “the measure of motion.” With both of these things in mind, what is the relationship to God to time?