Previous
The Time Traveller
The narrator of The Time Machine is all but absent from the book. He is one of the Time Traveller’s dinner companions, which suggests that he is also a member of the British elite, but his profession is not named and he does not figure into any of the Time Traveller’s story about the future, which comprises the bulk of the book. The narrator is notable, though, for seeming less skeptical of the Time Traveller’s story than the other dinner guests. However, the narrator does not seem to be able to fully absorb the lessons of the Time Traveller’s story, even though he does believe that it happened. The narrator, unable to overcome his desire for future humans to have improved on the conditions of the present, prefers to live with the assumption that future humans will have better lives than he will. This makes him unable to fight to change the Victorian social conditions that led to the Eloi and the Morlocks in the first place, which makes the narrator a rather ineffectual vehicle for the Time Traveller’s story.
The Narrator Quotes in The Time Machine
The The Time Machine quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Epilogue Quotes
Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man’s culminating time!
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and 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 Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deseru
And I have before me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers—shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle—to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The narrator, having expressed his discomfort with the darker implications of the Time Traveller’s tale of the future (cannibalism, social inequality, loss of knowledge and culture), chooses to focus on the fact that he has Weena’s flowers for comfort. These flowers symbolize the gestures of kindness and sympathy that made the Time Traveller feel at home in the future—they are, in a sense, symbolic of the only redeeming aspect of the future of the human race. In one sense, this is an argument for kindness as a fundamental human quality and it gives hope for the future of humanity. On Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beata
Get the entire The Time Machine LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
The Narrator Character Timeline in The Time Machine
The timeline below shows where the character The Narrator appears in The Time Machine. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
The book opens on the narrator at a dinner party of well-educated, upper-class professionals and specialists, including his friend, an eminent...
(full context)
Chapter 2
The narrator reflects that nobody believed the Time Traveller at the time because he was considered to...
(full context)
When the narrator arrives at the Time Traveller’s house, one of the dinner guests is holding a note...
(full context)
Chapter 12
...is dented and covered in grass. On the way out, the guests express disbelief, but the narrator states that he is undecided and he wants to go see the Time Traveller again...
(full context)
The narrator sits down in another room and the laboratory door closes. Then the narrator hears a...
(full context)
Epilogue
The narrator wonders about the Time Traveller’s fate, imagining him in a future in which all of...
(full context)
