Emma, or no Emma. I'm going back. And Mara didn't have enough to keep me there.
Gotta love how the English language survived 800,000 yrs of changing events through stone tablets, and photonics beings. Love it......
My guess is Wells felt that there was nothing for him to go back to in the past. Had he went back it would probably just depress him knowing that he was in a time where the love of his life was no longer with him. He took a liking to the people in the new world after getting to know them and wanted keep helping them moving forward. I thought it was a good ending.
shareOne of those situations where a man invents something so high tech like an actual time machine, but ends up absconding that in favor of "the simple life".
Looking after the Eloi was indeed likely another reason. Me, I would've chosen to live in the future prior to the cataclysm. For Wells, he knew that Morlocks would rule the world, and the only way to stop that was from 800K AD, and sacrificing his time machine.
He sacrificed the machine and his chance to return to the past so the Eloi could have a future. That's what selflessness is about.
shareYeah, english changed so much in 500 years, and that's when it was already a written language. In 800k years it either would've died out or changed so much, it would be a different language.
As for him staying, many people look for a purpose in life, not just comfort living. Check history and human expeditions.