I agree with Darwin’s theory of literary evolution because of Wells’ The Time Machine greatly heighten the aesthetic of what of what I hold the novel to be.
In the beginning of The Time Machine, the Time Traveler immediately begins to gain creditability in three ways. One, that he, the Time Traveler, can travel through time by using the fourth duration of space--imagination. Two, he makes his miniature model of the time machine disappear thereby traveling through time. And, finally he places me in the company of people such as a doctor, physiologist, and an editor. These people are known for their rational grip on reality, not for their ability to easily suspend their disbelief. Wells, who is also the Time Traveler, is indeed a skillful story teller for staging such a beginning to a story. Wells, like Kipling, does not assume that I, the reader, am going to immediately suspend my disbelief simply because he tells me to, in order to receive, what he is about to present with. H.G. Wells is extremely confident in his ability to persuade me by using concert evidence that he did travel in time, and this is what happened.
Darwin said, “A novel, according to my taste, does come into the first class unless it contains some person who one can thoroughly love.” I agree with Darwin to a degree; I have to both love and hate the person, who’s novels I favor to be first class. Novels are pieces of art that reflect life as the individual sees it, and to love a group or one particular piece of art like novel(s) I believe that one must identify with it and find some rarity about this particular piece of art. The Time Machine had both those qualities for me. I hated that I identified with the Time Traveler; therefore, I identified with the Morlocks. It as if Wells put a mirror in front of me when the Time Traveler finally discovers what the Morlocks were up to; Wells subtly provides a reflection into who I will become if I continue on this roller coaster called perfection. This information scared the sh**t out of me, and I hated Wells for bring this to my attention.
At the same time I loved it because how Wells reveals the “so-called” true me, to myself, is by getting me to suspend my disbelief that such a thing can happen. Thereby, truly traveling in time with Wells as guide, but he is not driving so forcefully to jab this information down my throat. He sneaks on me, and all I’m left with is an imperfect and faint representation of who I thought I was staring back at me. Wells’ subtle approach to revealing the ugly side of our possible devolution is The Time Machine’s rare quality , and in turn, it reveals the high aesthetism that the novel holds because Wells could not have accomplished what he does, without the use and vehicle of the novel.
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Thank you for directly responding to the prompt in the first sentence of your post. With this, you give your reader the firm ground from which s/he can investigate your response. (Of course, be careful of typos, as these only serve to weaken an otherwise direct and concise statement. See also the third paragraph, where you left out the important word “not” from the opening quotation from Darwin.) I wonder if you shouldn’t reorganize your paragraphs—i.e. the presentation your ideas—a bit: third paragraph begins to offer an interpreted definition of the notion of Darwin’s literary evolution with which you opened your post. And when I read the first sentence of the post, I was waiting for the follow up “definition of terms.” I also truly appreciated the learning experience you presented in this post—i.e. the idea that Wells “sneaks up” on the reader w/ a mirror into him/herself. This is a significant point of the text, a point that one could argue is precisely why the text has become a classic in its own right. What puzzled me, however, was that your conclusion (at least on the surface) seems to disagree w/ Darwin’s notion that poetry is of a higher aesthetic value than prose, so that our (and his) love of prose and dislike of poetry reveals a kind of atrophy of our aesthetic sense. So, do you mean, in the end, to reverse Darwin’s declaration? (The evidence you provide would seem to suggest this.)
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