The Time Traveler doesn 't appear until half way through their meal looking disheveled and worn. He explains to them after he has cleaned up that he had traveled to the future. What he accounts to them is most astounding. The symbolism which Wells using when talking about the future ties back to the conflict that between to classes when Wells was writing the book. When describing the Time Traveler’s interactions with the future it is quickly pointed out that there was a large white sphinx (Wells 19). The sphinx here as we later find out is where the Time Traveler’s time machine is hidden while he is there.The sphinx was used as symbolism for the government at the time big and wondrous but kept most of the population out of its inner-workings. This further shows Wells’ critique on how the government …show more content…
When Wells depicts what has happened to this place of great knowledge there is a tinge of sadness in his writing to see that the future has not made any advances but instead has regressed back to having the technology and knowledge of those in the stone age (Wells 53-59). He further proves his unhappiness at the regression of the future when he says: “But as it was, the thing that struck me with the keenest force was the enormous waste of labor to which the sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified” (Wells 56-57). When he talks about the waste of labor it begs the reader to question whether or not any of the work that they have been done was worth it because it will just be swallowed up and forgotten in a regressing