The Apocalyptic Fables of H. G. Wells

Bibliographic Data

ID20060147
AuthorsElaine Showalter (corresponding author)
Year1992
Pages69-84
Publication date1992-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueFin de Sicle/Fin du Globe (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/978-1-349-22421-0_5
OpenAlexW2345232257
ISBN9781349224210
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited4

In his book Going to Miami (1987), which is about the futuristic ethnic and cultural mix that has developed in Miami as a result of Cuban and Latino immigration, David Rieff expresses his outrage at having to share his flight from Kennedy to Miami with two students from the University of Miami, a 'muscular-looking, blond-downed' white boy and a 'tall black girl'. Although the boy is reading Dubliners, Rieff is convinced from overhearing their slangy conversation that 'the copy of Joyce was a bit of protective coloration' and that the students have 'a collective IQ barely above room temperature'. Indeed, they remind him of the post-apocalyptic world divided between 'the perfectly formed, brainless Eloi' and 'a hideous, competent tribe of subterraneans, the Morlocks', in H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. As Rieff notes, 'The Morlocks look after the Eloi, and intermittently, pause to eat them, a perfectly sensible arrangement which the traveller (played by Rod Taylor in the fifties film) screws up. These kids across from me, incapable of uttering a humane sentence, were Eloi. There was nothing whatsoever in their heads and ... I wanted to eat them.'1

Art · Art history · Girl · Humanities · Miami · Nothing · Outrage · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Tribe · American and British Literature Analysis · Anthropology · History · Irish and British Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology

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