# When the World Shook — Character guide

> Key figures in When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard.

- [Humphrey Arbuthnot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/unknown_narrator.md): Humphrey Arbuthnot is a widowed reverend and the story's narrator, who joins his old friends Bastin and Bickley on a Pacific expedition that becomes far stranger than intended. He is thoughtful, self-questioning, and qui
- [Mr. Bastin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/bastin.md): Bastin is Arbuthnot's fellow clergyman, earnest, argumentative, and often unintentionally funny, forever sparring with the skeptical doctor Bickley. He throws himself into learning island languages and into awkward moral
- [J. R. Bickley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/bickley.md): Bickley is the expedition's doctor, a brilliant, sardonic man who trusts medicine and reason above all and delights in needling Bastin. His blank denial of anything beyond the physical world is both his strength and his 
- [Oro](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/oro.md): Oro is the resurrected lord of a prehistoric civilization, immensely learned and terrifyingly proud, whose ambitions outlived his empire. He awakens to find himself alone save for his daughter Yva, with whom he shares bl
- [Yva](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/yva.md): Yva is Oro's daughter, a being of another age whose beauty and hidden power mark her as not quite of this world, yet whose kindness draws everyone who meets her. She grows sadder and more human as the story unfolds, and 
- [Tommy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/tommy.md): Tommy is Arbuthnot's dog, carried along on the voyage and into the island's strangest moments, where his tolerance and affection win him unlikely friends. The ancient Oro, indifferent to men, cares for Tommy more than fo
- [Marama](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/marama.md): Marama rules the island's native people, yet his authority shrinks before the awakened power on the Mountain that devoured his own high sorcerer. He half-suspects Bastin himself is the god, and obeys the strangers' deman
- [Natalie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/natalie.md): Natalie belongs to Arbuthnot's past, the reason he first resists his growing love for Yva even as it possesses him. Her hold on him is the quiet counterweight to the star-born affection drawing him forward, and he measur
- [Jacobsen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/jacobsen.md): The Danish mate of the ship, who later causes trouble.
- [Captain Astley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/astley.md): Captain of the ship that carries the protagonists to the island.
- [Sarah](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/sarah.md): A minor character, possibly a servant or local.
- [Widow Jenkins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters/widow_jenkins.md): A widow mentioned in Arbuthnot's parish.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/when_the_world_shook_se/characters