When the Sleeper Wakes

Summary

When the Sleeper Wakes is Wells's early dystopian novel about a man who sleeps for two centuries and wakes to find that he owns the world. In 1897 Graham, a Victorian radical exhausted by insomnia, falls into a trance in a Cornish seaside town. He sleeps for two hundred and three years. While he sleeps, his money, left in trust and growing through compound interest and inheritance, buys up much of the earth, and the trustees, the White Council, rule in his name. When he wakes in a vast glass-roofed London of moving roadways, airplanes and giant machines, the Council plans to drug him or kill him, since his existence threatens their power. The people of London, who have come to see the legendary Sleeper as a messiah, rise in revolution to free him, led by the politician Ostrog. Graham becomes the figurehead of the new order and learns the world he has inherited: a society divided between a wealthy, pleasure-seeking elite and a vast laboring class enslaved by the Labour Company in blue uniforms, with Pleasure Cities, babies raised in creches, and propaganda delivered by 'babble machines'. Ostrog has his own plans and intends to rule as dictator, bringing African police to crush the workers. Helen Wotton, a young woman who believes in justice, opens Graham's eyes to the people's suffering. Graham sides with the people and, in the final battle, flies an airplane against Ostrog's fleet of aeroplanes bringing troops, and falls to an uncertain end. The novel imagines a modern capitalist dystopia of mass media, urban crowds and air war, and it anticipated much later science fiction. Wells revised it in 1910 as The Sleeper Awakes; the library uses the original 1899 text. Readers should note that the book's portrayal of African troops reflects period racial fears and should be discussed critically. The story raises lasting questions about power, propaganda, ownership, and the duty of those who hold power to the poor.

Top Lessons

• Ownership and responsibility

  Graham owns the world but has done nothing to earn it. The novel asks what owners owe the poor.

• Propaganda

  Babble machines and crowds shape opinion. Wells foresees mass media manipulation.

• False messiahs

  The people hope in the Sleeper as a savior, but Ostrog uses that hope.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Graham's insomnia and two-century trance frame the novel.

• Ch. 1

  Graham describes his sleeplessness and despair.

• Ch. 2

  The trance and medical observations of the sleeping man.