The Time Machine 12

Study Guide Questions for Chapter Twelve & Epilogue

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, Unbelief

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. What strange thing did the Time Traveller observe about Mrs. Watchett as he returned to his own time?

2. How were the men of the dinner party told they could know the distance between the Sphinx’s pedestal and the Time Machine’s original place of departure?

3. How did the Editor respond to the Time Traveller’s story?

4. What did the Medical Man request to have from the Time Traveller (which he was denied)?

5. Why, according to the story, did the Time Traveller bring his dinner guests out into the cold?

6. When the unnamed man returned to see the Time Traveller the next day, what was the Time Traveller doing?

7. What did the unnamed man see as entered the Time Traveller’s lab to tell him about his appointment with Richardson?

8. What became of the Time Traveller?

9. How did the unnamed man tell us as the reader we must live in light of the Time Traveller’s story?

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

1. The Time Traveller said, “I know…that all this will be absolutely incredible to you. To me the one incredible thing is that I am here to-night in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces and telling you these strange adventures.” Why did the Time Traveller feel this way?

2. What did the Editor mean by saying, “What a pity it is you’re not a writer of stories?”

3. Why did the Time Traveller feel the need to go and look at his time machine?

4. The unnamed man tells the reader, “The story was so fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober.” Given the three modes of persuasion (Logos/Reason, Pathos/Emotion, and Ethos/Character) with what does this man seem to be struggling between as to whether or not to believe the story?

5. When the unnamed man entered the laboratory he “seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure.” What connection might exist between this and the reference to what happened “last Christmas” at the very end of chapter one?

6. The unnamed man said, “He may even now—if I may use the phrase—be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age.” Why did he ponder upon whether he could use the phrase “even now?”

7. The unnamed man said, speaking of the Time Traveller, “He, I know—for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made—thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.” Why does he think we must live as if this were not so (even if it is)?

8. Are there any ways that you can think of by which the Time Traveller might have been able to persuade the men at his dinner party that his story was really true?

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

1. Consider, for a moment, the very concept of time travel. For time travel to be possible, what would that imply about the nature of time, the past, present, and future? What logical difficulties are there in the concept of time travel? What ethical concerns would be important to consider in relation to time travel? Ultimately, do you think time travel is theoretically possible? Why or why not?

2. In the seventh Logic question it was asked why the man thought we should live as if something were not true, even if it were true. What do you think about that claim? Is it ever appropriate to live as though something were not true which you know, or at least suspect, actually is true? If so, what would be an example of such a situation? If not, why not?

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. Consider the following passages of Scripture: Genesis 1:1; Ecclesiastes 3:11; Colossians 1:15-20; 2 Peter 3:8; Revelation 1:8. In light of these and other similar passages of Scripture, how should we understand God’s relationship with time?