Eloi (The Time Machine)

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The Eloi are one of the two fictional post-human races, along with the Morlocks , in HG Wells ' 1895 novel The Time Machine .

In HG Wells' The Time Machine

By the year 802,701 AD, humanity had evolved into two separate species: the Eloi and the Morlocks . The Eloi live a mundane, comfortable life on the surface of the earth, while the Morlocks live underground, maintaining machines, and providing the Eloi with food, clothing, and inventory. The narrative suggests that the separation of species may have been the result of increasing divisions between different social classes. With all their needs and desires perfectly met, the Eloi have grown slow, dissolute, and naive. They are described as shorter than modern humans, with shoulder-length curly hair, pointed chins, big eyes, small ears, small mouths with bright red thin lips, and subhuman intelligence. They don't do much work other than feeding, playing, and mating, and are characterized by apathy . When Weena , a young Eloi girl, falls into a river , none of the other Eloi helps her and is instead saved by the time traveler. From time to time the Morlocks catch individual Eloi to eat, and since this usually happens on moonless nights, the Eloi are terrified of the dark. Part of the book, written for the New Review version and later published as a separate short story, reveals that a visit by the time traveler in the even more distant future will result in encountering rabbit-like, hopping herbivores that appear to be the offspring of the Eloi are. They are described as sole walkers , with longer hind legs and tailless, covered with straight, grayish hair thickened around the head into a Skye Terrier mane , with human-like hands (described as forefeet) and with a rounded head with a protruding forehead and behind forward-looking eyes that were hidden by long hair.

The Eloi are kept, bred and cared for by the Morlocks as a source of food, much like cows or pigs are today.

Film adaptations

In the 1960 film adaptation of the book , the Eloi are portrayed as identical to modern humans, but small, blond and blue-eyed. The Morlocks use a civil defense system to lure them into their caves. One of the Eloi is motivated to beat a Morlock to death when he attacks the time traveler.

In the 2002 film adaptation The Time Machine , the Eloi are portrayed as identical to modern humans in the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and clothing of a primitive kind and appear to be an ethnic grouping of different native races, but which have retained the English language as an intellectual exercise.

In Dan Simmons' Ilium

In Dan Simmons' Ilium novel, "Eloi" is a nickname for the lazy, illiterate and uncultivated descendants of the human race after the descendants of humans left the earth. The name is a nod to HG Wells' Eloi.

In Simmons' novel, humans of the ancient kind and descendants of humans rule, with the Eloi being kept in "zoos" in restricted areas on earth. The Eloi are tech-savvy, but they don't understand technology; they regress and unlearn thousands of years of culture, thought and reason until they are satisfied with the pleasure of mere existence.

Bookworm Adventures 2

In the second episode of the word-building puzzle video game Bookworm Adventures, an Eloi under the modified name Loyim in the sixth book is an enemy together with several Morlocks.

Later use of the name

  • The progressive rock band Eloy are named for their breed.
  • The Elokoi in Brian Caswell's novel Deucalion are probably inspired by the Eloi, but without the dark side of the Morlocks.
  • The novel Air by Geoff Ryman contains a fictitious ethnic minority called Eloi, whose struggle for autonomy is deposited by a repressive government.
  • James Alan Gardner uses the terms Eloi and Morlock in his novel Expendable to refer to two warring sects of "glass people".
  • The name is used as a derogatory term in the novel Feed by Matthew Tobin Anderson .
  • In Greg Bear's novel Moving Mars , Eloi are people trying to extend their lifespan beyond 1,000 years through the use of advanced medical nanotechnology and other enhancements .
  • In the film The War of the Sky Lords of John Brosnan Eloi occur as genetically modified humans.
  • In his book After America: Get Ready for Armageddon , used the conservative author Mark Steyn , the Eloi as a metaphor for a post-Western society, which under the weight of secular - socialist collapsed political correctness, self-loathing and her claim.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Time Machine: An Invention, Restored Version by HG Wells, In: gutenberg.net (accessed April 25, 2020)
  2. ↑ Review of The War of the Sky Lords by John Brosnan, June 11, 1992, In: kirkusreviews.com (accessed April 25, 2020)