Around the World in Eighty Days

Phileas Fogg is the protagonist of the novel. He is a wealthy, eccentric, and solitary English gentleman who belongs to only a single social organization: the Reform Club. An example of the perfect English gentleman, he manifests Victorian-era ideals down to the precision with which he moves: He is “exactitude personified, and this [is] betrayed even in the expression of his very hands and feet […] the limbs themselves expressive of the passions” (9). Passepartout, his valet, is frequently surprised by Phileas’s principled actions throughout the narrative, such as rescuing Aouda despite the delay the rescue causes. Passepartout comes to recognize these actions as demonstrations of heart and virtue in his master, which function in tandem, as much as possible, with the man’s devotion to order.

Phileas is a symbol within multiple themes in the narrative. He spends his days reading newspapers and gambling at the Reform Club. He has a strange obsession with routine and punctuality, making the protagonist a symbol within the theme of Punctuality, Time, and Time Management. He is characterized as quiet and taciturn, his behavior often referred to as economical and machine-like, further developing his