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Malachi Constant / Unk / the Space Wanderer
Winston Niles Rumfoord is a wealthy member of the American elite class who lives on a magnificent and eccentric estate in Newport, Rhode Island. He is married to Beatrice, but they hate each other and never consummate their marriage. After flying his spaceship into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, Rumfoord and his dog, Kazak, enter a kind of time warp wherein they only “materialize” on Earth once every 59 days, on Mars once every 111 days, and so on—except for the planet Titan, where they are permanently materialized. Existing inside the chrono-synclastic infundibulum gives Rumfoord a near-omniscient knowledge of everything in the past and future, which he perceives as happening all at once rather than in linear fashion. However, while at first this appears to give Rumfoord a wise, peaceful view of the world, the reality turns out to be quite different. Winston has a kind of prophetic foresight about Beatrice and Malachi Constant’s future, and tells them (to their horror) that they will live on the planet Titan and have a son together. Winston eventually engineers a brutal war between Earth and Mars in order to invent a religion on Earth called the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, which becomes a means of increasing his own power. He has a vicious hatred of Malachi Constant due to the fact that Constant is extraordinarily lucky. This hatred remains mysterious throughout the novel until it becomes clear that Rumfoord despises luck because he knows that seemingly lucky events are actually the work of the Tralfamadorians, an distant species of wise and powerful aliens who create the whole of human history in order to deliver a missing part to a Tralfamadorian messenger, Salo, who ends up stranded for 200,000 years on Titan. In Salo’s mind, he and Rumfoord develop a friendship, but by the end of the novel Rumfoord treats Salo with unbearable cruelty, confirming his status as the villain of the novel. Rumfoord ends up dying when a sunspot interferes with the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, flinging him out of the Solar System.
Winston Niles Rumfoord Quotes in The Sirens of Titan
The The Sirens of Titan quotes below are all either spoken by Winston Niles Rumfoord or refer to Winston Niles Rumfoord. 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:
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Chapter 1: Between Timid and Timbuktu
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The moral: Money, position, health, handsomeness, and talent aren’t everything.
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“When I ran my space ship into the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, it came to me in a flash that everything that has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been.” He chuckled again. “Knowing that rather takes the glamour out of fortunetelling—makes it the simplest, most obvious thing imaginable.”
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The discovery of the chrono-synclastic infundibula said to mankind in effect: “What makes you think you’re going anywhere?”
It was a situation made to order for American fundamentalist preachers. They were quicker than philosophers or historians or anybody to talk sense about the truncated Age of Space.
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Chapter 11: We Hate Malachi Constant Because…
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“Luck, good or bad,” said Rumfoord up in his treetop, is not the hand of God.”
“Luck,” said Rumfoord up in his treetop, is the way the wind swirls and the dust settles eons after God has passed by.”
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Chapter 12: The Gentleman From Tralfamadore
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“There it is—friend,” he said to his memory of Rumfoord, “and much consolation may it give you, Skip. Much pain it cost your old friend Salo. In order to give it to you—even too late—your old friend Salo had to make war against the core of his being, against the very nature of being a machine.
“You asked the impossible of a machine,” said Salo, “and the machine complied.”
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Winston Niles Rumfoord Quotes in The Sirens of Titan
The The Sirens of Titan quotes below are all either spoken by Winston Niles Rumfoord or refer to Winston Niles Rumfoord. 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:
).
Chapter 1: Between Timid and Timbuktu
Quotes
The moral: Money, position, health, handsomeness, and talent aren’t everything.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“When I ran my space ship into the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, it came to me in a flash that everything that has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been.” He chuckled again. “Knowing that rather takes the glamour out of fortunetelling—makes it the simplest, most obvious thing imaginable.”
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
The discovery of the chrono-synclastic infundibula said to mankind in effect: “What makes you think you’re going anywhere?”
It was a situation made to order for American fundamentalist preachers. They were quicker than philosophers or historians or anybody to talk sense about the truncated Age of Space.
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Chapter 11: We Hate Malachi Constant Because…
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“Luck, good or bad,” said Rumfoord up in his treetop, is not the hand of God.”
“Luck,” said Rumfoord up in his treetop, is the way the wind swirls and the dust settles eons after God has passed by.”
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Chapter 12: The Gentleman From Tralfamadore
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“There it is—friend,” he said to his memory of Rumfoord, “and much consolation may it give you, Skip. Much pain it cost your old friend Salo. In order to give it to you—even too late—your old friend Salo had to make war against the core of his being, against the very nature of being a machine.
“You asked the impossible of a machine,” said Salo, “and the machine complied.”
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