I'm going to build on what I mentioned in class with the exotic aura of purple crabs and spaceships. Lasswell's reading was stuffy and boring, most likely because it's close attachment to the present day, or at least more so than The Time Machine. Wells has a similar message, but we are able to think a bit more on the subject because it takes place at 802, 701 AD, a time where everyone alive today will be lucky to be dirt. The Morlocks and Eloi are not "human" in our sense, thus we are able to see the differences among them and the social interplay of the elite and working class. If the Morlocks really were workers and the Eloi really social elites, it would seem more real to the reader and make the political point, if any, more visible. With real people the undertone of socialism/communism would be louder and might make Wells seem crazy. Just as Professor Jackson mentioned that Star Wars is just the retelling of classic fairy tales just set in a time long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away; the exotic nature of parts of the story grab our attention as well as distance the reader/movie watcher from the story. After all, who doesn't like aliens, time machines, and giant crabs?
I don't know if you would call this exotic, but the structure of The Time Machine as a story within a story made it more appealing and fun to read to me. The story is more like a conversation, or in my case like my grandfather telling me one of his long winded stories. It makes the story more personal, grabbing hold of the readers attention the entire time.
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I think, more importantly, the structure of the story enables us to feel the suspense at the end of not knowing what happened to our intrepid hero.
One other note on the structure. I'm not sure if anyone else is familiar with Thomas More's Utopia, but in form the Time Machine is very similar. In More, the story is related by a man who has had a discussion with a captain who has just returned from the land of Utopia. I can't help but wonder if Wells had this in mind while he was writing the Time Machine. For that matter could this book be classed as much as a successor to More as it is a predecessor to science fiction?
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