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Light, Darkness, and Fire
The Time Traveller values intelligence above all other human traits, and he is disappointed that future humans are not only unintelligent, but also weak, silly, and uncurious. For a while, his relationship to the Eloi is defined only by intellectual interest and not by real empathy, but it is through his friendship with Weena that he begins to feel true affection for and identification with these creatures. Put another way, it is in the kindness of the Eloi that the Time Traveller can locate their humanity. Weena loves putting flowers in the Time Traveller’s pockets (she treats his pockets like “an eccentric kind of vase for floral decoration”), and this gesture represents the kind nature of the Eloi. Weena’s flowers are also the only piece of compelling evidence of his travels that the Time Traveller brings back to the present, and they represent hope for humanity in the face of such a bleak tale of the future of mankind. As the narrator notes, the flowers serve “to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.”
Weena’s Flowers Quotes in The Time Machine
The The Time Machine quotes below all refer to the symbol of Weena’s Flowers. 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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Epilogue
Quotes
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:
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Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Time Machine LitChart as a printable PDF.
Weena’s Flowers Symbol Timeline in The Time Machine
The timeline below shows where the symbol Weena’s Flowers appears in The Time Machine. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...is the year 802,701, and the Time Traveller finds himself in a garden of strange flowers, near a large Sphinx-like statue made of white stone. For the first time the Time...
(full context)
Chapter 4
...he has come from the sun, and the beings begin to drape him in lovely flowers.
(full context)
The beings lead the Time Traveller to a large building in which there are exotic flowers, fruits, and bushes, and an even larger group of the beings. The Time Traveller sits...
(full context)
Chapter 5
...them drowning. He rescues her, and afterwards she attaches herself to him, adorning him with flowers to express her gratitude. Her name, he learns, is Weena, and she seems to him...
(full context)
Chapter 7
...the building on the horizon. Throughout the journey Weena had been filling his pockets with flowers, the Time Traveller recalls. The Time Traveller, breaking his narrative, pulls two flowers from his...
(full context)
Chapter 12
...The doctor indicates that he doesn’t believe the Time Traveller, but when he inspects the flowers that Weena had put in the Time Traveller’s pocket he notices that they are highly...
(full context)
Epilogue
...important to live as though he isn’t. Besides, the narrator has kept the two shriveled flowers of Weena’s that remind him that “even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and...
(full context)
