H.G. Wells’ View of Race Essay

In the assigned reading somewhat and by H. G. Wells there is little to indicate that he is a racist. In the two short stories Wells has the narrator refer to African natives as heathens in Aepyornis Islands and as niggers in Jimmy gawp the divinity fudge. Likewise in the assigned sections of the of book Tono-Bungay, the narrator refers to niggers. By directlys standards such words are often automatically anticipate to be a sign of bigotry against a race, and if they were written right away they might very well indicate such a tendency. notwithstanding at the time when Wells wrote, political correctness had not reared its nauseating head and people, particularly English people describing the natives of Africa as niggers. This was the word used. It was not necessary a deprecating term, it was the term. When Wells uses the word he is conformist to the vernacular of the day. This is not to say that there isnt something of an elitist attitude in the characters Wells created.There seems to be three things that Wells consistently lampoons the Christian religion, the ignorance of people of all sorts, and the superior, toffee-nosed attitude of the English. Wells was a author of satire. He pokes pleasure at religion both when he describes the avidness of the natives to consider him a god in Jimmy Goggles the God as well as enjoying the playing of a practical jocundity on the missionary to embarrass him in front of the villagers.He clearly dislikes ignorance, particularly those people who foolishly pontificate on things they know nobody about such as the orchids and the aepyornis, and the case of Dawson v. Butcher. Lastly he enjoys satirizing the excessively self-important attitude of English men who go into the hobo camp and foretell this to be just they he expected them to be when he was posing back in his private club in London. It is as if anything that is not English is improper and is only tolerated because the standards of the people in such places as the jungle are embarrassingly low and likely to stay that way.In Tono-Bungay Wells lets the narrator tell his story of a trip into the jungle where a man came from a village and hailed us in and unfamiliar tongue (emphasis mine). He did not say it was a language he did not speak, but because it was not Oxbridge English, it was unknown. Interestingly, because Wells sees fit to make fun of such a superior attitude, one cannot help but enjoy if he is not poking fun at himself at the kindred time because of his attitude toward members of these groups of people.