The Roll Call
Here is the surprise about the characters in The Time Machine. The hero has no name. The storyteller has no name. By my count, only a handful of people in the whole story are ever called by name, and one of them gets named more than fifty times. This guide is spoiler light, and I will warn you before the one spoiler.
The Cast at a Glance
First, the list. The Time Traveller is the inventor and the hero. The storyteller is the guest who writes it all down. Around the dinner table you have Filby, the Psychologist, the Medical Man, the Provincial Mayor, the Very Young Man, the Editor, the Journalist and the Silent Man. In the far future you meet Weena, the Eloi, and the Morlocks.
Look at that list. Most of it is jobs, not names. In my reading that is on purpose, because almost everyone in the opening scenes is a type, and the story only needs them to answer one question. Do you believe the man?
The Time Traveller
He is the one who tells the story, and he is the one the story is about. In the opening scene he has grey eyes, a pale face, and a lean forefinger he uses to mark his points. His chairs are his own patents, and the storyteller says he is too clever to be believed.
His name is never given. When the storyteller asks where he is, the text prints a dash and nothing else. He has written seventeen papers on physical optics, he says, and he admits he is not a young man. He is clever, and a little vain about it. But Wells makes him human. He gets frightened, he loses his temper, he drags a little man by the robe and lets go, and he admits his guesses are only guesses. He also never thinks to bring a weapon, medicine, or a camera.
The Storyteller
The storyteller is the other half of the frame. He says he was one of the Time Traveller’s most constant guests. He is not a hero. He watches, he doubts, and he writes things down, though he admits that pen and ink cannot show the speaker’s white, sincere face in the lamplight.
The reason this matters is simple. The Time Traveller’s tale reaches us through a man who cannot say whether to believe it. After the story he lies awake thinking, and he cannot reach a conclusion. The storyteller is you, at the dinner table.
The Dinner Table
Now the guests. Filby is the argumentative one, with red hair. He says it is against reason, and he winks at the storyteller when the big machine is shown. The Psychologist begins by calling it humbug, then explains why the machine cannot be seen, and presses the lever himself. The Medical Man is the doubter with a doctor’s eye. He says wait for the common sense of the morning, and he is the one who examines the flowers.
The rest are sketches. The Provincial Mayor says “serious objections” with an air of impartiality. The Very Young Man wants to invest money and hurry ahead. The Editor thinks in headlines and calls the tale a gaudy lie. The Journalist makes jokes, and the Silent Man never speaks, though he jumps when a glass is rung.
Weena
Now the first spoiler warning. Weena is the one Eloi who gets a name, and the text uses it fifty-four times. The Time Traveller pulls her out of a river when nobody else bothers. She gives him flowers, follows him everywhere, and sleeps with her head on his arm.
He keeps saying she is just like a child. And yet she is the one who teaches him that fear still exists in this world, because she is terrified of the dark. She is also the character the book hurts you with. She disappears in the forest fire, and the Time Traveller believes she is dead. Two white flowers from her are the only proof he brings home.
The Eloi
The Eloi are the small, gentle people of the year eight hundred and two thousand, seven hundred and one. They are about four feet tall, with curly hair, tiny ears and big mild eyes, and they all look alike. They eat only fruit, they sleep in big halls, and they laugh and run off to the next thing. A strange question about thunder shows the Time Traveller they think like five year old children.
The name Eloi shows up only eight times in the whole text. So they are less characters than a mood. Apart from Weena, not one of them has a name. They are beautiful, bored, and afraid of the dark, and they turn away when he points at the wells.
The Morlocks
The Morlocks are the opposite. They live underground, among machines. They are pale, with chinless faces, big eyes and lidless, pinkish grey stares, and flaxen hair down their backs. The light blinds them. They touch with lank fingers, they move in packs, and they make a rustling like wind in leaves.
Compare them with the Eloi. The Morlocks are the ones who act. They take the Time Machine and they hunt. The Time Traveller shrinks from their touch, and he is tempted to kill them. Which tells you something about him as well.
The Small Names
Here are the rest of the named people. Mrs. Watchett crosses the laboratory like a rocket on the way out, and backwards on the way home. Hillyer flashes by for a moment. Richardson is the publisher the storyteller promised to meet at two. And a man-servant confirms no one has left the laboratory.
They are tiny, but they do a job. They anchor the machine in a real house, on a real Thursday, with real people who did not see him leave.
The Machine
Last, the other lead. The first model is a glittering frame of metal, ivory and crystal, and it took two years to make. The full size machine is brass, ebony, ivory and quartz, squat, ugly, and askew. It runs on a starting lever and a stopping lever, and when he steps away from it, the Time Traveller unscrews them and keeps them in his pocket.
It is also the one thing the Morlocks cannot work out. By his guess, they take it apart in their dim way, and they clean it and oil it. Then they leave it as bait.
My Take
This part is my opinion, so treat it as a draft. I think the characters are thin on purpose. Wells gives you labels, so the ideas can move. If you want deep portraits, this is not that book. I think Weena is the weakest part, because she is mostly there to be saved, and the Morlocks are the strongest, because they scare me for a few lines.
If this helped, the full guide is on bookexplained.com, and the summary and ending explained are there too. Which character did you remember most?
