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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!
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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.
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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:
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:
