# Time — Fifty-One Tales character guide

> Time in Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Great clumsy Time

**First appearance:** 0012-time-and-the-tradesman

## Snapshot

Great clumsy Time, who has carried away the seven gates of Thebes, now dallies foolishly at the feet of a painted Sphinx.

## Who they are

Time has spared no painted face in all the world except the Sphinx's, and there he lies in the sand with his foolish hair spread about her paws, smiting cities when he should be smiting her. The narrator dreams of blinding him, shutting him in the Pyramid of Cheops, and making him ripen corn and do menial work—if only the Sphinx will betray his secret. But the same dream fears that in his ultimate anguish Time may blindly pull down the House of Man. He is the tale's tyrant and its fool, and the tension between those two is the whole story.

## In the story

### [The Assignation](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-assignation)

Implied as the court where the poet's chaplets are meant to be worn.

### [The Sphinx at Giza](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-sphinx-at-giza)

Time is depicted as a fool dallying at the Sphinx's feet, smiting cities and carrying away beautiful things, but potentially vulnerable to being bound.

### [The Raft-Builders](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-raft-builders)

Time is depicted as a monstrous whale that consumes small songs and overthrows ships.

### [Time and the Tradesman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/time-and-the-tradesman)

Prowls the world, enters a furniture shop, and punishes the tradesman for imitating his work by aging him.

### [The Unpasturable Fields](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-unpasturable-fields)

Time is mentioned as wearing the feet of the mountains and stumbling upon their rocks, emphasizing the mountains' endurance against him.

### [The Worm and the Angel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-worm-and-the-angel)

The worm's three-thousand-year struggle implies the passage of time.

### [The Latest Thing](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-latest-thing)

The river of Time is the setting, and Time's flow brings debris from uncleanly cities.

### [Alone the Immortals](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/alone-the-immortals)

Time and his centuries kneel in vassalage at the feet of the immortal years.

### [The Lonely Idol](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/the-lonely-idol)

Portrayed as a malevolent force that crushes beauty and hastens decay, the adversary the narrator asks the idol to oppose.

### [Nature and Time](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/chapters/nature-and-time)

Strides triumphantly through Coventry, indifferent to surroundings, and reassures Nature that he has not forgotten her.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/characters/time
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/fifty_one_tales_se/characters