The Time Keeper

The old man is a supernatural character who remains mysterious throughout the fable. He directs Dor’s narrative once he is Father Time, creating the pool from which Dor hears human voices, and providing Dor with the cryptic prophecy and task that eventually free him from the cave. He first appears to Dor when Dor creates the first sundial; this is something of a supernatural warning, suggesting that a boundary has been crossed by humanity.

The next time he appears Is when Dor is pulled into the cave after he has tried climbing Nim’s tower, also suggesting another boundary crossed by humanity since Dor is trying to stop time. The old man describes himself as a servant of the most high God and answers Dor’s questions cryptically. Later, when he sends Dor to the modern world, he will be the proprietor of the clock shop where Dor meets both Victor and Sarah and then helps Sarah and Victor when they return Dor to the shop after he has become mortal again. His presence suggests a higher moral truth for human beings but also that humans must learn lessons for themselves through experience.

Alli is a secondary character who is Dor’s childhood friend and later his wife. Dor loves Alli and feels completely comfortable with her, although she does not share his interest in measuring time. Dor’s obsession with measuring strains their relationship since he is often focused on measuring when they are together rather than on enjoying the time they have. Alli goes with Dor when he is exiled, and she is deeply pained at having to leave their children. In contrast to Dor, Alli values relationships over intellectual knowledge, and it is her desire to help others that leads her to contract the plague that will kill her. She hence exemplifies the novel’s argument that time is precious and should be savored rather than controlled. Dor tries to save her by stopping time, but after becoming Father Time and finally being allowed to return to the moment he left her, he too values their relationship over intellectual knowledge and their two souls mingle after they die together.

Nim’s character is a reference to the biblical character Nimrod, referenced in Genesis 10:8-12, Micah 5:6, and 1 Chronicles 1:10 of the Old Testament or Tanakh. In the Genesis passage, Nimrod is listed as the grandson of Noah’s son Ham and described as a mighty warrior and hunter who establishes his kingdom in Shinar and then moves to Assyria. In Micah he is remembered as the lord of Assyria, and in 1 Chronicles he is renowned as a great warrior. The character Nim in The Time Keeper is similarly renowned for his strength and power as well as his urge to conquer, extending even to the gods. Although there are no surviving references to Nimrod in Babylonian or other Mesopotamian records, some scholars have noted the similarities between Nimrod and the epic hero Gilgamesh (Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia.“"Nimrod". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 March 2024).

Within the fable, Nim is initially a foil to Dor and later an antagonist. Alli, Dor, and Nim all play together as children, but when they grow up Nim becomes strong, powerful, and wealthy while Dor remains average and never accumulates wealth due to his obsession with timekeeping. After they marry, Dor and Alli move in with Dor’s parents, which is a sign that Dor is incapable of providing for Alli on his own, and Dor’s mother laments that Dor did not turn out like Nim who became a wealthy and powerful king.

Unlike Dor, who discerns patterns in nature and wants to chart and understand them, Nim understands the world in terms of power dynamics and nature as the direct actions of the gods, and he wants to control the gods through conquest. He represents the capitalist impulses of humanity which Albom critiques throughout the text. Nim is obsessed with accruing power through conquest and ultimately decides to challenge the gods for their power. He builds a tower that reaches to the heavens so that he can defeat them, and he demands that Dor come to work on his tower and share his timekeeping knowledge to make Nim more powerful. Nim banishes Dor when Dor refuses, and there is no mention of him again. Nim is not present when Dor races up the tower before it collapses, and there is no mention of how Nim reacts to the destruction of his tower.

Sarah is a deuteragonist of the fable and one of the two modern-day human beings whom Dor is sent to instruct and save. Sarah is a stereotypical awkward teenager who struggles to relate to her peers, and because of this, she cannot see her own value. She is intelligent and excels at math and science, but the only one who valued those qualities about her, her father, left their family to begin a new family. Although her mother, Lorraine, loves her, she doesn’t understand Sarah, and has trouble connecting with her. Sarah doesn’t connect with her peers at school because she sees herself as too smart and not pretty enough. When Ethan shows interest in her, she begins to tie her personal value to his opinions. Once she discovers that he doesn’t care about her, she loses all self-confidence and doesn’t see the point in living out the rest of her life. She understands her heartbreak as all-encompassing and can’t see a future beyond it. By showing her a future without her, Dor teaches her the value of living life and the value of hope in the face of adversity. Sarah eventually does become a successful scientist who works with a team and who has a good relationship with her mother. This development underscores the moral of the story to value one’s time.

Although Sarah lives with her mother, they have a strained relationship that improves in the future when Sarah is a successful scientist. Lorraine doesn’t share Sarah’s interest in science and math the way her father did, and Sarah has mixed feelings about her parents. On the one hand, she feels hurt and abandoned by her father, but she was more like him; and on the other she appreciates that her mom is the “good parent” who didn’t abandon her, but they don’t see eye to eye on much.

Throughout the fable, Lorraine thinks back on Sarah’s childhood and how their family didn’t really savor the good moments they shared together. Lorraine is still trying to figure out who she is after her divorce, spending time with other friends who have experienced divorce, and doesn’t spend much one-on-one time with Sarah. She doesn’t put many boundaries on Sarah, such as a curfew, so she isn’t always aware of where Sarah is or what she is doing. Seeing the pain that her death would cause her mother in the vision of the future Dor shows her is a turning point for Sarah.

Ethan is Sarah’s romantic interest and an antagonist. Sarah’s unrequited love for Ethan and his social media post disparaging her romantic feelings for him lead her to want to end her life. Sarah sees Ethan as better than herself because he is popular and attractive, so when he shows an interest in her, she begins to believe that she has value, too. When they finally meet at his uncle’s warehouse, she wants him to accept her, so she drinks vodka with him even though she has never drunk it before. She feels uncomfortable getting too physical with him so she only kisses him and pulls away when his hands start roaming; in this encounter, Ethan’s function as the antagonist is most overt. Later, she decides that if there is another date she will do whatever he wants because she is determined to make him happy, but Ethan has already moved on and is not interested in seeing Sarah again. Ethan doesn’t value Sarah as a person, which he makes clear when she tries to give him a Christmas present; he also makes this clear in the future that Dor shows her when he isn’t too concerned after her death.

Victor is the other deuteragonist and another one of the two modern-day human beings Dor must help. He is a stereotypical workaholic businessman who represents the problems with capitalism. Albom portrays him chasing productivity and attempting to buy time through investing in the cryonics lab; he also does work while on dialysis. Victor learns from a young age not to hold anything or anyone too close because loss is an integral part of his childhood. This philosophy helps him become a successful businessman, but it strains his relationship with others including his wife, Grace. The one thing that Victor is determined to cling to is his life. When he is diagnosed with terminal cancer and kidney failure, he uses his power and money to find a way around death through cryonics. Although he is dedicated to surviving, through his interactions with Dor, he realizes that he has not spent as much time dedicated to living and enjoying the life he has been given; Albom implicitly suggests that this is a result of capitalist structures. In the vision of the future Dor presents to Victor, he is an exhibit behind glass rather than a fully functioning human being and he realizes how much he has neglected the relationship he has with Grace. After his encounter with Dor, he chooses to value each moment he has rather than trying to live forever and he aids Sarah in her future by providing the funding for her education.