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Study Guide for H. G. Wells: The War of the Worlds
in World War I. Why would a gas like this be a particularly frightening weapon?
Chapter 16: The Exodus from London
The first cylinder had landed Thursday, the fighting began Friday, and the panic in London described in Chapter 14 had begun on Saturday morning. We are now at the dawn of Monday. What evidence is there that panic is overriding civilized behavior in this flight from the Martians? How does the brother rescue a lady, and what is the consequence to himself? In what ways does this scene contradict our usual expectations of a hero saving a lady in distress? Note how the death of the "eagle-faced" man is made emblematic of insane greed. Humanity is not at its best in these scenes. When the brother is giving advice to Miss Elphinstone toward the end of the chapter about escaping their pursuer, how does he avoid the stereotyped "kill or be killed" dilemma which plays so great a role in fiction?
Chapter 17: The "Thunder Child"
The home counties are the rural counties southeast of London. The "Pool of London" is the port on the Thames. What effect might the constant repetition of specific place names have had on Wells' first readers? "Chaffering" is haggling, bargaining. Ostend is a seaport across the channel in Belgium.
Book II: The Earth Under the Martians
Chapter 1: Under Foot
We return now to the narrator, trapped in the empty house at Halliford with the curate. The narrator is no swaggering hero, but feels superior to the curate. Note the "unaccountable redness" on the river, reminiscent of blood; it will be explained later.
Chapter 2: What We Saw from the Ruined House
Wells had first imagined future humans as essentially giant brains in "The Man of the Year Million" (1893) and The Time Machine (1895), based on the Darwinian observation that humanity had evolved in the direction of larger and larger brains. Since Mars is an "old" planet it follows that its inhabitants are similarly "old," further along this path of evolution. At the end of the paragraph reading "And this was the sum of the Martian organs," Wells added this sentence to later editions: "The bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at the same time I think that we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit." How does this addition alter the emotional impact of the paragraph? It was common in the nineteenth century to assume that sexual desire was a "lower" emotion, associated with animals, which we might hope to evolve away from. This seems to have happened to the Martians. Has the result been beneficial? Explain. The "certain speculative writer of quasi-scientific repute" is Wells himself, of course. Telepathy is posited here despite the lack of a plausible scientific theory to explain it. Wells' lead was to be followed by a great many SF writers later. Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896) was the most important pioneer in glider building. The "Handling Machine" is an early example of a robot, though [next page]