Per 1 The Time Machine Illuminator
Colin Easter
Before the Time Traveller begins telling his story of traveling through time, the characters he is telling the story to are introduced. These characters have names such as Journalist, Medical Man, and Psychologist. The narrator also leaves out names when they should be used. For example, on page 14, the Time Traveller says, “You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?” The narrator uses “blank” in other sentences as well to purposely leave out names. The other men themselves are called by their profession, not their names. Why do you think the author names the characters in these ways? Will the professions of the men play a role in the future, or is the author trying to draw contrasts in the professions of that time to the professions of other times?
Category: Illuminator | Tags: Add new tag 4 comments »
March 21st, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Ok I think that the speaker wants us to rember the people by there jobs rather than their names. He wants to contrast the jobs of the present to the ones of the future. He may want us to focus on time as a whole rather than us know the people of “this” time and “that” time. He may want us to look at every time as one time. The narorator may just not know everybodies names, but I beieve more in the first theory.
-Taran
March 21st, 2009 at 7:34 pm
I think that Taran is partially right with saying that the narrator wants us to remember the people by their professions rather than their names, but I believe that there is something else to this. I’m thinking maybe the author wanted us to think that their is some reason to protect the people by not saying their names. This makes it seem like a true event that occurred, and now the people need protection. The speaker says on page 8, “I had been jammed in a corner with a gentleman who shall be disguised as Filby.” By using the word “disguised” this idea is even more reasonable.
~Erin C. =]
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:25 am
Sonam Sherpa
I also believe that both Taran and Erin (haha that rhymes) are both right in saying that the narrator wants us to recognize the characters by what they do instead of by their names. This goes back to the idea that Juliet was talking about, names are really not important it is deeds and what one does that makes them recognizable. Another reason why the narrator chose not to use names is because from the beginning of the story we can obviously tell the difference in career by the way that each person talks. So by naming them by their profession it would make them much easier to recognize from their comments. The final reason that I thought H.G.Wells made the narrator call the characters by their profession is because names are confusing. What I mean by this is that no matter how well you remember something you can’t remember all of the details and maybe H.G. Wells didn’t want the narrator to mess up the retelling of this story.
March 28th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I think that the narrorator is pointing out that the names are not important it is their job. You should remember the character by their job not thier name. I think there is going to be comparisons from thier jobs and how they percieve this whole time machine buisness with the professions of the future and the past.