Other than the obvious purpose of the time machine -to travel in time- we looked at several different possible purposes of The Time Machine in class. Possibilities such as it being a warning against abandoning the grindstone of progress struck me as being the most probable motivation for Wells, given the historical context it was written during. This line of thought, that people actually thought everything of importance had been discovered and there wasn't really anywhere else to discover led me to wonder if this had a link we missed in Wells' writing. Space travel had been brought up, such as in Jules Vernes works, but in 19th Century London, space wasn't considered. Everything major had been accomplished, right? Just as we remarked that in The Time Machine the Time Traveler didn't find that people had traveled into space or any progress in an outward direction, they had remained at home just like the good old British of Wells' time were expecting to. I think it only stands to reason that the Time Traveler never found evidence of space travel or progress, because that was part of the point Wells' may have been making about people already being on a path to atrophy unless they continued with discovery and exploration.
However, I think Wells was given far too little credit as an author. Granted, this doesn't make for the best novel, but I tend to look more at the literary aspect of things, and as we mentioned, Wells didn't intend this to be a novel. Perhaps we viewed it as lacking literary drama because we didn't view it in an episodic manner, but a span. Even as a novel though, the premise it presents has still drawn a reading audience for decades, whatever else its shortcomings. I also appreciated how insignificant characters such as the Editor -he edits- didn't merit names the reader wouldn't have recalled anyhow. If Wells' had done this without distinction, we would have known the Morlocks merely as "ground dwellers" and the Eloi as "the dancing flower people" or something of the sort. The fact that Wells' gives them creative titles leads me to believe we missed something significant here. Then again, I could just be creating what I want to be there from what an author added on a whim.
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I think Well's message can also be viewed as a satire on the gentleman scientist of the Victorian era. While the satanic mills gobbled up soot covered children, types like the time traveller were wondering what to do with themselves. In many ways the "now what?" theme can be seen as an indictment against victorian values. England owns and exploits half the world. Yet they still wonder what to do with themselves once "progress" has won out.
There's also the explanation that, in describing people by their functions, Wells was merely following a literary convention of the time. Moreover, their names really ARE needless distractions from the greater narrative, which I believe exists in that form only to provide suspense at the end. It's much more satisfying to be unsatisfied as to the Time Traveler's ultimate fate.
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