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Section 9 of 17
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Page 2 of 2
IX. The Morlocks
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Chapter 9 — IX. The Morlocks
Central question
Who are the Morlocks, and why are they frightening?
Main argument
The Traveller learns that the Morlocks maintain the machinery of the world but also prey on the Eloi....
AI Summary
The Time Machine
Section 9 of 17
Chapter 9 — IX. The Morlocks
Central question
Who are the Morlocks, and why are they frightening?
Main argument
The Traveller learns that the Morlocks maintain the machinery of the world but also prey on the Eloi. What had been a simple opposition between gentle surface life and grim underground labor becomes a predator-prey ecology. The chapter makes the future’s social allegory more savage.
Key ideas
Industrial maintenance persists beneath the surface.
The exploiters are no longer the only predators.
Civilization has become an ecological trap.
Key takeaway
The workers have not vanished; they have mutated into the darkness below.
on
the climbing bars now ,
and ,
kicking violently ,
I disengaged myself from
the clutches of the Morlocks,
and was speedily clambering up the shaft ,
while they stayed peering and blinking up at me :
all but one little
wretch who followed me for some way ,
and well-nigh secured my boot as a
trophy .
“
That climb seemed interminable to me .
With the last twenty or thirty
feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me .
I had the greatest difficulty
in keeping my hold .
The last few yards was a frightful struggle against
this faintness .
Several times my head swam ,
and I felt all the
sensations of falling .
At last ,
however ,
I got over the well-mouth
somehow ,
and staggered out of the ruin into the blinding sunlight .
I
fell upon my face .
Even the soil smelt sweet and clean .
Then I remember
Weena
kissing my hands and ears ,
and the voices of others among the
Eloi.
Then ,
for a time ,
I was insensible .
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