The War of the Worlds

IGCSE 0475 English Literature Revision Guide

Book One: The Coming of the Martians

Chapter 1: The Eve of the War
Summary The narrator introduces the Martians: vast, cool intellects watching Earth with envy. He describes the complacency of Victorian society, where people went about their daily lives unaware of the threat. Astronomers see explosions on Mars but dismiss them as volcanic activity.
"Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."

Significance: Establishes the cosmic hierarchy. Humans are no longer the dominant species; we are the prey. The word "unsympathetic" removes any hope of negotiation.
Key Themes
  • Imperialism: Wells critiques British colonialism. Just as the British wiped out the Tasmanians, the Martians intend to wipe out humanity.
  • Human Arrogance: Humanity is compared to "infusoria" (microbes) under a microscope, highlighting our insignificance.
Narrative Techniques

Scientific Verisimilitude: Wells uses real astronomical terms (spectroscope, nebular hypothesis) to make the fiction sound like a factual report.

Chapters 2-4: The Cylinder & The Martians
Summary The first cylinder lands on Horsell Common. It is an artificial, hollow object. Crowds gather, treating it like a tourist attraction. When it opens, the Martians emerge—leathery, tentacled, "fungoid" creatures that struggle in Earth's gravity. The crowd is horrified.
"A big greyish rounded bulk... The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively... The gorge rose at it."

Significance: This is "abject imagery." The Martians are not humanoid or noble; they are biologically repulsive, triggering a primal instinct of disgust in the reader.
Techniques

Juxtaposition: Wells contrasts the mundane (people selling apples/ginger beer) with the alien (the cylinder). This grounding in reality makes the horror more effective.

Chapters 5-6: The Heat-Ray
Summary A "Deputation" approaches the Martians with a white flag. The Martians respond with the Heat-Ray, an invisible beam that instantly incinerates the crowd. The narrator flees in terror as the common is set ablaze.
"It was as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire."

Significance: The language dehumanizes the victims. They cease to be people and become mere combustible material. It emphasizes the overwhelming technological superiority of the Martians.
Analysis

Communication Failure: The white flag is a universal symbol of peace for humans, but meaningless to Martians. This signals a war of extermination, not politics.

Chapter 7: How I Reached Home
Summary The narrator returns home, shaken. He finds life continuing normally (trains, dinner). He reassures his wife with false confidence, relying on the logic that Earth's gravity will trap the Martians in the pit.
"We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear."

Significance: Deep irony. The narrator compares the Martians to dodos (flightless birds that went extinct). In reality, humans are the dodos here—oblivious to their own extinction.
Techniques

Psychological Realism (Cognitive Dissonance): The narrator cannot process the trauma, so he reverts to denial and mundane routine (dinner) to cope.

Chapters 8-12: The Fighting-Machines & Weybridge
Summary The military mobilizes. The Martians reveal their Tripods (Fighting-Machines)—towering metal giants. At Weybridge, humans manage to destroy one Tripod with artillery ("a lucky shot"), but the Martians retaliate by boiling the river. The narrator barely escapes.
" Monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career."

Significance: The Tripod represents the perfect fusion of biology and machinery. It transforms the Martians from sluggish pit-creatures into mobile gods of war.
Analysis

Nature vs. Machine: The Tripods smash pine trees and boil rivers. It is a symbol of industrial technology destroying the natural world.

Chapters 13-17: The Curate, Black Smoke, & London
Summary The narrator meets the Curate, who views the invasion as God's wrath ("Sodom and Gomorrah"). The Martians use "Black Smoke" (poison gas). In London, the narrator's brother witnesses the social collapse ("The Great Panic") and the sacrifice of the warship Thunder Child.
"The whole population of the great six-million city was stirring, slipping, running... the beginning of the rout of civilisation."

Significance: This panorama of London shows how quickly social order disintegrates. Civilization is a thin veneer that cracks under pressure.
Techniques

Shift in Perspective: Switching to the brother's POV allows Wells to show the macro-scale destruction of London, while the narrator offers the micro-scale survival story.

Character Foil: The Curate acts as a foil to the narrator. The Curate's religious hysteria contrasts with the narrator's scientific rationality.

Book Two: The Earth Under the Martians

Chapters 1-3: Imprisonment & The Red Weed
Summary Trapped in a ruined house in Sheen, the narrator and Curate spy on the Martians. The narrator describes Martian physiology (brains and hands only, no digestion/sex). He watches them feed by injecting human blood. The alien Red Weed overgrows the landscape.
"They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and INJECTED it into their own veins."

Significance: This reverses the food chain. Humans are no longer the apex predator; we are cattle. It is the ultimate horror of the invasion.
Analysis

Evolutionary Warning: Wells suggests the Martians are what humans might become—pure intellect without emotion or physical body. It is a cautionary tale about over-valuing intelligence over humanity.

Chapter 4: The Death of the Curate
Summary The Curate goes insane from hunger and fear, shouting loudly. To prevent them both being discovered, the narrator strikes him with a meat chopper (killing him or knocking him out). The Martians hear the noise, drag the Curate's body away, and feed on him. The narrator hides in the coal cellar.
"I saw the Martian... scrutinizing the curate’s head. I thought at once that it would infer my presence from the mark of the blow I had given him."

Significance: High tension and moral ambiguity. The narrator is haunted not just by the alien threat, but by his own capacity for violence to survive.
Techniques

Claustrophobia: The setting is confined to a scullery. The tension comes from the inability to move or speak.

Chapters 5-7: The Stillness & The Artilleryman
Summary The narrator emerges into a silent, alien world covered in Red Weed. He meets the Artilleryman again on Putney Hill. The Artilleryman has grand, fascist plans to live underground and preserve the "strong" human race, but the narrator realizes the man is lazy, drunk, and all talk.
"They haven't any spirit in them—no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn't one or the other—Lord! What is he but funk and precautions?"

Significance: The Artilleryman critiques Victorian society (clerks, office workers) as "tame." However, his own failure to act shows that "survival of the fittest" requires discipline, not just big ideas.
Analysis

Social Darwinism: The chapter explores the idea of who deserves to survive. While the Artilleryman's theories sound compelling, his lack of morality and action undermines them.

Chapters 8-9: Dead London & Wreckage
Summary The narrator walks into a dead, silent London. He hears a wailing cry: "Ulla, ulla." At Primrose Hill, he finds the Martians dead in their machines. They were killed not by weapons, but by Earth's bacteria (putrefaction), against which they had no immunity.
"Slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth."

Significance: This is the resolution. It is a Deus Ex Machina (God from the machine), but a biological one. It underscores the theme that humans are part of nature, not masters of it. We survived because we have evolved with our bacteria.
Techniques

Anti-Climax: There is no final battle. The powerful Martians simply rot away. This emphasizes the fragility of even the most advanced intelligence.

Sound Imagery: The "Ulla, ulla" cry represents the dying grief of the Martians, humanizing them slightly in their final moments.

Chapter 10: The Epilogue
Summary The narrator reflects on the aftermath. Humanity has learned humility and advanced science by studying Martian tech. He is reunited with his wife (who he thought dead). However, he is permanently scarred by the trauma.
"And strangest of all is it to hold my wife’s hand again, and to think that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead."

Significance: The novel ends on a human note, but one tinged with trauma. The world has returned to "normal," but it will never be the same.
Analysis

PTSD: The narrator describes seeing the city as a "dead city" even now. This psychological realism grounds the sci-fi story in human experience.