War of the Worlds - Second Response

Second Response (Pages 55-133 of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds)
I will be addressing the following standards: ELABLRL1, ELABLRL2, and ELABLRL3.

1) The Theme (ELABLRL2)
ELABLRL2 The student identifies, analyzes, and applies knowledge of theme in a work of British and/or Commonwealth literature and provides evidence from the work to support understanding.

In my last response, I placed all of my social behavior findings under section two: Imagery. However, I found it more appropriate to put it here, under the theme, considering social behavior in this story is a large portion of the theme. I have also revised my idea of the story's theme, separating each part of it into single words/phrases: Dystopia, invasion type war, and mass hysteria. Now I'll discuss these with evidence for each.

1) Dystopia

It's very obvious this story is a dystopia, but what makes it unique is that it involves alien invasion. Normally, when you think of a dystopia you think of past wars in history, like the Vietnam War, any of the World Wars, and the U.S. Civil War. Or maybe you think of books, like 1984. Personally, I tend to think of movies like The Day After Tomorrow, I Am Legend, War of the Worlds, V for Vendetta, Total Recall, Akira, Battle Royale, Twelve Monkeys, Minority Report, Idiocracy, The Matrix and so forth. The key connection between these movies is their futuristic settings. Dystopias, then, tend to be set in the future and focus on the fall and fail of mankind. War of the Worlds (book) has each of these qualities.

"Never before had I seen houses burning without the accompaniment of an obstructive crowd."

And connected with every dystopia is usually: mass hysteria.

2) Mass Hysteria

There is plenty of hysteria in War of the Worlds. But preceding every act of hysteria is usually a sense of confusion or ignorance. In society, we are comforted by many false securities around us, when at any time something disastrous could occur. That's not to say that we should always be on edge for danger, but I suppose society should better understand the ever-present dangers we face every day. For some, this is an impossible task.

 "Maybe there was a murmur in the village streets, a novel and dominant topic in the public-houses, and here and there a messenger, or even an eye-witness of the later occurrences, caused a whirl of excitement, a shouting, and a running to and fro; but for the most part the daily routine of working, eating, drinking, sleeping, went on as it had done for countless years--as though no planet Mars existed in the sky."

Especially in the London area, the people were unprepared and unbelieving of the Martian news. Most hadn't a clue of the true nature of things. However, a lack of efficient communication during this time limited the awareness throughout the country.

When the news reached London, it was vague and didn't seem too threatening. The Londeners were described by Wells as being so secure in their world "that they could read without any personal tremors".

"No one in London knew positively of the nature of the armoured Martians..."

"There was a lot of shouting, and one man was even jesting. The idea people seemed to have here was that the Martians were simply formidable human beings, who might attack and sack the town, to be certainly destroyed in the end."

"London, which had gone to bed on Sunday night oblivious and inert, was awakened in the small hours of Monday morning to a vivid sense of danger."

Let's reflect, for a moment, on the people who did understand what was happening, such as the soldiers, eye-witnesses, and Wells himself. Would it not be a trying conflict to inform the public? Surely no one would believe you if you warned of an alien invasion.

"The soldiers were having the greatest difficulty in making [the Londeners] realise the gravity of [the Martians'] position."

Wells specifically addresses a stubborn old man refusing to listen to a warning soldier:

 "'Do you know what's over there?' I said, pointing at the pine-tops that hid the Martians. 'Death!' I shouted. 'Death is coming! Death!' and leaving him to digest that if he could, I hurried on..."

When the message was finally clear to the people, I noticed another pattern emerging: cockiness in authority. While the Martians seemed hard to defeat, governmental and military authorities were too confident in their annihilation.This was hurriedly leading to the destruction of these authorities.

"And meanwhile the military and naval authorities, now fully alive to the tremendous power of their antagonists, worked with furious energy."

"Any further cylinders that fell, it was hoped, could be destroyed at once by high explosives, which were being rapidly destroyed and distributed."

"...but the public was exhorted to avoid and discourage panic."

"The public would be fairly warned of the approach of danger..."

"And so, with reiterated assurances of the safety of London and the ability of the authorities to cope with the difficulty, this quasi-proclamation closed."

"...the police organisation, and by mid-day even the railway organisations, were losing coherency, losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening, running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body."

Have you ever heard someone talking about a past horrific event in their life, saying something along these lines: "I just never thought that kind of thing would ever happen to me."? It's true, and when you think of your personal life, you don't expect certain dangers and disasters to happen to you, either. In the face of these dangers actually occurring, most people feel helpless and panicked. Wouldn't you?

Wars, invasions, poverty, death, and destruction are definitely far from anything you can fathom unless you've been through them. While we feel safe in our lives, let's take a moment to think about those who are going through these terrors and give them the benefit of the doubt for being unprepared and unexpectant.

In War of the Worlds, Wells does a phenomenal job of revealing true human nature under disastrous circumstances. He shows true faces under the facades of humanity. In fact, though the story is fictional, I am appalled at the genuineness of the situations he describes. How does one come to understand human nature so intimately?

Wells describes a city in close proximity to the Martians:

"...the whole place was in such confusion as I had never seen in any town before. Carts, carriages everywhere, the most astonishing miscellany of conveyances and horseflesh."

Later, when Wells is with a mass of people attempting to cross the river and the Martians appear:

"At the sight of these strange, swift, and terrible creatures, the crowd near the water's edge seemed to me to be for a moment horror-struck. There was no screaming or shouting, but a silence."

I particularly like what Wells says here to his nervous, frightened companion, the Curate:

"'Be a man!' said I. 'You are scared out of your wits! What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God has exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent!'"

In describing fugitives escaped to an unharmed town:

"...The faces of these people were haggard, and their entire appearance contrasted conspicuously with the Sabbath-best appearance of the [towns]people..."

When the narrator's brother reaches outer London:

"So much as they could see of the road Londonward between houses to the right was a tumultuous steam of dirty, hurrying people, pent in between the villas on either side; the black heads, the crowded forms, grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner, hurried past, and merged their individuality again in a receding multitude that was swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust."

"...it was a stampede--a stampede giant and terrible--without order and without a goal, six million people, unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of civilisation, of the massacre of mankind."

Human nature is different with each person, but there are many underlying patterns and similarities. When faced with extreme disaster, most people would likely freeze up or panic. Why wouldn't they? Unless you were a trained professional, how you could stop these sorts of feelings from occurring? Then again, human nature is full of surprises. Suddenly, in the face of death and grave defeat, people will rise up with new strength and courage to protect themselves and others. Such people are most likely what keep our species alive.

Sadly, the spectrum of human nature also has a negative side--the side of greed and self-importance. I noticed a pattern beginning in the story, as the situation grew graver and fear spread further: man began turning on fellow man, even in the face of mass extinction, for the sake of his sole need to survive. 

"The man was running away with the rest, and selling his papers for a shilling each as he ran--a grotesque mingling of profit and panic."

"...the engines of the trains that had loaded in the goods yard there ploughed through shrieking people..."

The narrator's brother witnesses a wagon being hijacked by a group of men in the midst of a chaotic abandonment of the nearby town:
"...[he] saw a couple of men struggling to drag them out of the little pony-chaise..."

The scenes witnessed of a massive crowd (by the narrator's brother) were very disturbing:

"A brewer's day (a wagon?) rumbled by with its two near wheels splashed with fresh blood."

In the same crowd, a frantic, greedy man goes after the money he drops:

"...he flung himself, with both hands open, upon the heap of coins, and began thrusting handfuls in his pocket. A horse rode close upon him, and in another moment, half-rising, he had been borne down under the horse's hoofs."

"Before [the narrator's brother] could get to [the man], he heard a scream under the wheels, and saw through the dust the rim passing over the poor wretch's back."

"The man was writhing in the dust among his scattered money, unable to rise, for the wheel had broken his back, and his lower limbs lay limp and dead."

"...my brother lugged him sideways. But he still clutched after his money, and regarded my brother fiercely, hammering at his arm with a handful of gold."

Eventually the man bites the narrator's brother to get him to release him, and the man is swept into the crowd, probably dead within minutes.

When the narrator comes to the river, this is what he witnesses:

"Steamboats and shipping of all sorts lay there, tempted by the enormous sums of money offered by fugitives, and it is said that many who swam out to these vessels were thrust off with boat-hooks and drowned."

Unfortunately for humankind, the Martians are capable of much more than they appear, and much more destruction and heartache is destined for the race of man...

"They do not seem to have aimed at extermination so much as at complete demoralisation and the destruction of any opposition. They exploded any stores of powder they came upon, cut every telegraph, and wrecked the railways here and there. They were hamstringing mankind."

2) Imagery and Characteristics (ELABLRL1)

ELABLRL1 The student demonstrates comprehension by identifying evidence (i.e., examples of diction, imagery, point of view, figurative language, symbolism, plot events, main ideas, and characteristics) in a variety of texts representative of different genres (i.e., poetry, prose [short story, novel, essay, editorial, biography], and drama) and using this evidence as the basis for interpretation.

At many points in the story, Wells uses very vivid and engaging writing to describe the horrors and wonders occurring all around the narrator. Imagery, as I mentioned in my former response, are the key to stories like science-fiction in which certain qualities we cannot interpret any other way than by descriptive words. How can you describe colors to a blind man?

Wells does an incredible job of helping the reader picture the destruction occurring throughout the story. I chose these quotes for their quality and vividness in the imagination. Not only do they clearly portray an image in my mind, but the described sounds which accompany these images make it feel all the more realistic.

The narrator witnesses a downed Martian machine, fallen into the river:

"Thick clouds of steam were pouring off the wreckage, and through the tumultuously whirling wisps I could see, intermittently and vaguely, the gigantic limbs churning the water and flinging a splash and spray of mud and froth into the air. The tentacles swayed and struck like living arms... Enormous qualities of a ruddy-brown fluid were spurting up in noisy jets out of the machine."

Also in the river, the narrator is panicked by the disaster happening around him and the nearby shore:

"The air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of noises--the clangorous din of the Martians, the crash of falling houses, the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame, and the crackling and roaring of fire."

The narrator's brother wakes up to a terrifying new world:

"He went to bed a little after midnight, and was awakened from lurid dreams in the small hours of Monday by the sound of door-knockers, feet running in the street, distant drumming, and a clamour of bells. Red reflections danced on the ceiling. For a moment he lay astonished, wondering whether day had come or the world gone mad."

The black, killing-smoke detonated by the Martians is also described in great detail throughout the story:

"...the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward"

"...a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims..."

"And then night and extinction--nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead."

During a massive evacuation, Wells intricately describes the crowd rushing past:

"There were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in dust, their weary faces smeared with tears. With many of these came men, sometimes helpful, sometimes lowering and savage. Fighting side by side with them pushed some weary street outcast in faded black rags, wide-eyed, loud-voiced, and foul-mouthed. There were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like clerks or shop-men, struggling spasmodically..."

Throughout the story, Wells makes many interpretative comparisons that I found important for a better understanding of the story. Many of these simple yet shocking similes and metaphors compared two different things that are in fact quite similar. I found them to be quite important to the quality of the story and the engagement of the reader. Wells especially compares the machines to human beings, informing the reader of their life-like quality.

"[The Martians]...are just in the beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked out. They have become practically mere brains, wearing different bodies according to their needs just as men wear suits of clothes and take a bicycle in a hurry or an umbrella in the wet."

"But the Martian took no more notice for the moment of the people running this way and that than a man would of the confusion of ants in a nest against which his foot has kicked."

"Through the reek I could see the people who had been with me in the river scrambling out of the water through the reeds, like little frogs hurrying through grass from the advance of a man..."

"...[the Martian was] advancing with a leisurely parody of a human stride."

After the narrator describes how the Martians eat (this will be explained in the next section):

"The bare idea of this is no doubt 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."

3) Connections (ELABLRL3)

ELABLRL3 The student deepens understanding of literary works by relating them to their contemporary context or historical background, as well as to works from other time periods.

I'd like to continue my connections from the last response, considering that many more similar ones are made throughout the story so far.
I chose to connect War of the Worlds to its counterpart film, The War of the Worlds (2005).

Although I have only seen snippets of the older film, I feel that it lacks the sturdy connections to the book. The aliens, for one thing, are much different and use different powers to overthrow their victims. However, given that the older film was made in 1953, a full-sized tri-pod machine would have been quite difficult to produce and film.

Here are the connections I found most similar between the book and the 2005 film:

In the movie, there is a scene in the city where Ray (Tom Cruise) and his children (Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin) approach the harbor where a massive crowd is struggling to gain access to the ferry. It is obvious there isn't enough room for as many people as the crowd holds, but a hysteria has been spread by the approach of the tri-pods. Ray manages to get aboard the boat with his children, though there had been a barricade of army soldiers. In the book, a similar situation occurs:

"Here we found an excited and noisy crowd of fugitives. As yet the flight had not grown to a panic, but there were already far more people than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross."

"At that the Pool became a scene of mad confusion, fighting, and collision, and for some time a multitude of boats and barges jammed in the northern arc of the Tower Bridge, and the sailors and lighterman had to fight savagely against the people who swarmed upon them from the river front. People were actually clambering down the piers of the bridge from above."

In another scene, young Rachel (Dakota Fanning) runs off from her family to use the bathroom in the woods. She keeps going further and further in, rashly convinced she's not hidden enough. Soon she comes upon a small river, and after a moment, a mass of dead bodies come floating down the current. This scene, which I had previously regarded as irrelevant for the movie's plot, also occurred, with some slight differences, in the book, when the narrator is crossing a bridge:

"...but I noticed floating down the stream a number of red masses, some many feet across. I did not know what these were--there was no time for scrutiny--and I put a more horrible interpretation on them than they deserved."

At one point in the movie, just after the ferry is knocked into the water and Ray and his family are floating helplessly along, a tri-pod is first witnessed gathering humans--plucking them from the water and storing them in a circular basket underneath the hood of its head. A similar scene occurs in the book, only on land:

"He used no Heat-Ray to destroy them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently he tossed them into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him, much as a workman's basket hangs over his shoulder."

When Ray and his family stay in a house for the night, they wake up in the middle of the night to a terrible noise and crash just beside the house. All members of the family are nearly destroyed by the chaos, but manage to escape the destruction. They find out, after escaping the house, that a plane attacked by tri-pods had crash-landed just beside the house. In the book, one of the Martian-holding cylinders falls just beside the abandoned house the narrator and his friend the Curate are taking cover in:

"And then followed such a concussion as I have never heard before or since. So close on the heels of this as to seem instantaneous came a thud behind me, a clash of glass, a crash and rattle of falling masonry all about us, and the plaster of the ceiling came down upon us, smashing into a multitude of fragments upon our heads."

In the movie, there was no suggestion of the Martians' eating habits, but people were 'sacrificed' for their fresh blood. In one scene, conveniently half-hidden by a vehicle, a tri-pod lays a captured human to the ground and stabs him with a sharp tentacle, producing a spray of blood. I can't remember entirely what the purpose of this was, but it matched the book to some degree:

"...they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins. ...blood obtained from a still living animals, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal..."

One of the main visual symbols in the movie was the red weed that grew rapidly over any surface on Earth. It was apparently brought by the Martians, but why and what it did were unknown. In the book it is explained further:

"I may allude here to the curious suggestions of the red weed. Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green for a dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint."