The Narrator Character Analysis

Before the Time Traveller witnessed the future, his beliefs were much like the narrator’s: he thought humans would advance indefinitely and solve the pressing problems of Victorian society. As the Time Traveller becomes disillusioned, his view of humanity adjusts accordingly, becoming bleaker and bleaker and then downright pessimistic. Though the narrator knows and respects why this would be, he cannot himself share the view that his own time, full of violence and strife, is the pinnacle of humanity. This underscores two cognitive and cultural biases that Wells is interested in throughout the book: that progress is linear (efforts to solve problems will create a better world, and knowledge will always expand) and that human beings are essentially good. The narrator’s folly here is a sad ending to the book. The Time Traveller has likely sacrificed his life in order to tell a story that could have profound social consequences for the Victorian era. Were the elites at the Time Traveller’s dinner party to take his tale to heart, they might be able to effect that kind of social change that could prevent the human race from splitting in two and decaying. However, because even the narrator (the only one to believe the Time Traveller at all) falls victim to these cognitive biases, he is unable to confront the truth of the future and therefore he is powerless before it.