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War of the Worlds CrammingUp until chapter 11, a wealth of techniques: Juxtaposition of his poetic language and scientific language. Emerges all the way through. Poetic language often when he speaks about earth, e.g. green places “a morning star of hope”, “green with vegetation”, “eloquent with fertility”, “narrow, navy crowded seas” chapter 1, [page 4-5]. Passion and patriotism, nationalistic pride (AO3). Scientific language, gives sense of tension within the narrator, e.g. “140,000,000 miles”, “nebular hypothesis” – attempts to make him lofty, elite almost an omniscient role. But this, ironically, is limited because limited by earthly understanding, own experience. See this most when, in other chapters, he tries to define the Martian technology (experiences with Martians with own earthly understanding). E.g. when he sees Martians emerging from cylinder in chapter 4 [pg 20], “two luminous discs like eyes, resembling a little grey snake about the width of a walking stick” – omniscient to a point but limited to own earthly experiences. Philosophical speculation which characterises his own persona through the novel – contrasted by recount novel. Set in 1884, narrator speaking from 1890. Speculation we know to be ironically misguided and misjudged, because he’s proposing grand ideas, but story has already happened. Places reader in vulnerable position of 1884. Chapter 1, apathy and zeitgeist. Even in educated circles, such as Ogilvy’s astronomy field, even he is ignorant. “Chances are a million to one”POIOUMENA “I remember, I remember, I remember” – (epizuexis) “I wished I had a light to smoke with” – emerging in his narrative. Like asides to talk to reader. Gender – end of chapter 1, wife emerges. Traditional Victorian relationship is established through the pronoun ‘my wife’, objectification. ‘I explained the signs of the zodiac to her’ – preposition, her dependency on him, her ignorance. The stars being signs of fate and beauty to a woman rather than anything scientific. Romantic, poetic language. Wells’ labouring in the first chapters, up to chapter 8, get that sense of recounting narrative of the invasion. To build up to climax of fighting and destruction of Surrey. Laboriously. Convey in an episodic structure to original readership – magnitude and scale of the threat. (Serialisation, magazine release). Chapters 7-8, essentially a recount of chapter 5 – Horsell common, then outskirts, then local perspective then nationalistic perspective. Grows sense of perspective of same event – lingers over heat ray perspective. All the while, ironically trivialising it in the national press – sense of ignorance of society as a juxtaposition to own growing fear. Key ideas in first 11 chapters – ‘the thing’, impersonal noun right from chapter 1. Key quotes: “the Thing”. Hindsight, has this lack of experience to fully qualify what it was that destroyed man so violently and indiscriminately. Chapter 2 – Ogilvy’s narrative after first 2 paragraphs. Funny narrative transition – hear through narrator other narrator’s experiences (credible?). Time from Friday morning to night, his death; somehow managed to control crowds and organise everything and find the time to tell the narrator everything. Trying to make narrator’s omniscience believable. Seem him almost impartial to corroborate his own narrative. Validates narrator’s even if it’s implausible. The Deputation – trying to open the cylinder. Three men in power (Chapter 3). Chapter 3 is class division chapter. Initially, Ogilvy represents ironic ignorant man of science; he believes only to an extent. There’s a man in it, refuses to believe there is anything alien inside it.Characterises chapter 2 – introduction of sound. Sharp noise [page 11]: “a stirring noise within its cylinder, he ascribed to the unequal cooling of its surface”, juxtaposition of sounds of cylinder and lack of sound of countryside – “the early morning wa so wonderfully still, and the sun just clearing the piens towards wet bridge was wonderfully warm…he doesn’t remember hearing any birds that morning…he was all alone on the common.” Menacing eeriness of stillness of earth and sounds of the cylinder. Metaphor for superiority? Sound builds throughout the novel up to the Martians’ communication with each other – humanity understates their ability to communicate because they don’t understand the Martians. Highlights the flaws in humanities’ lack of communication. E.g. tripods, ch. 10: “aloo”, sound of communication. By book 2, chapter 8: “Ulla”. Sounds form a sort of crescendo throughout the novel, progressive, advanced, superior race that WE underestimate. Social commentary on humanity’s hubris, pride and utter dominion, imperialistic might. Sense of not seeing Martians as any kind of threat at all. Faint sound, from the start, lack of sound from earth. Don’t pick up on any of the foreboding warning signs – have that pride, sense of their own conceit, that blinds them to reality of their own weakness. Failed defences, military attacks occur, sense of blind panic. Mass exodus. Despair, rioting. Chaos. Social breakdown. No organisation, unlike the Martians. Sounds build from chapters 2-5. Chapter 2, ‘thin sizzling sound’.Chapter 3 – class division. Look at the difference between the people in charge and the people in the crowd: boys who sit on edge of pit, cyclist, gardeners, butcher, girls carrying a baby, golf caddy (the common people), then sense of elitist, condescending narrative – page 15 and 17 “lordly carriage”, “basket chaise” contrasting a “heap of bicycles.” Then deputation – page 17. Several workmen, and in charge – Henderson, Ogilvy and Stent: represent the press, astronomy and science. Upper classes. They are referred to as ‘the Deputation.’ Capitalised to emphasise importance. Narrator gets pulled into Deputation. Deputation controlling crowd – representation of elite minority. Yet, by the end of chapter 5, because of their proximity to cylinder they are decimated first. In all of their power in keeping crowd back, in their stupidity were first ones to die. Ironic criticism of capitalism – ridicules elite for their snobbery and foolishness because they suffer first. By the end of chapter 3, narrator arrives and goes to Ogilvy – gets asked to find Lord Hilton; “I was very glad to do as he asked and so became one of the privileged spectators” – desire to be included in the elite. Desire to be one of the most important people, but the actual irony of then being sent away. This is what saves him. Not there when deputation are killed. Growing sense, in chapter 4, colour imagery, pathetic fallacy , foreshadowing, noise, dynamic verbs – Techniques amalgamate tension and climax. Chapter 4-8 big section. After chapter 11, becomes a road narrative – following various characters’ narratives. Relies heavily on characterisation. General techniques: Pathetic fallacy – darkness of common, ‘sun was setting’ chapter 4; ‘dusk came on slow’ chapter 5.Dynamic verbs – ‘groups were hurrying’ chapter 4, ‘coiled up out of the writhing middle’ Martians, chapter 4, ‘innocent quivering’, chapter 4. Pathetic fallacy: Page 19/chapter 4: ‘the sun was setting' – foreshadows doom on humanity as ironic contrast to heat ray.Page 24/chapter 5: ‘the dusk came on...the stillness of the evening'- ominous sense of calm before imminent catastrophe .Page 26/chapter 5: ‘overhead the stars were mustering, and in the west the sky was still a pale, bright, almost greenish blue.’ – sense of change over the natural world/planet foreshadows the Earth under the Martians (Book 2).Dynamic verbs:Page 19/chapter 4: ‘hurrying...swayed' – movement of the crowd around the pit is almost symbiotic in its ignorance and inhumanity, ironically.Page 20/chapter 4: ‘coiled up out of the writhing middle, and wriggled in the air' – distortion and animalistic descriptions of Martians tap into the ‘otherness' of Wells' invasion literature fear tactic.Page 21/chapter 4: ‘bulged...quivered and painted and dropped saliva. The body heaved and pulsated convulsively...tentacular appendage gripped...swayed’ – grotesque, monstrosity heightened through verbs, as well as its ‘otherness'.Page 26/chapter 5: ‘trees burst into fire...sudden squeal of a horse’ – sense of immediacy, chaos and terror heightens the Martians' power/tech/force and renders humanity vulnerable and fragile.Similes, metaphors and other key imagery:Page 20-1/chapter 4: ‘resembling a little grey snake...the size perhaps of a bear...the Gorgon groups of tentacles’ – animal imagery and comparisons to humanity’s history show the Narrator’s inability to grasp the reality of the Martians’ physicality (and therefore threat/power); the humanisation if the Martians could be a comment on Imperialism and Colonialism; it could also reflect the lack of scientific knowledge of the Enlightenment.Page 21/chapter 4: ‘glistened like wet leather' – used twice shows Narrator’s lack of understanding of Martians as representative of humanity’s ignorance.Page 23/chapter 5: ‘ I was a battleground of fear and curiosity.’ – metaphor of Narrator’s turmoil representative of juxtaposition between scientific desire and human terror.Page 27/chapter 5: ‘Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from without, came-Fear.’ - the irony of the noun and verb choices ‘thing’ and ‘falling’ are in direct comparison here to the cylinders and Martian descriptions of the ‘falling’ stars and the ‘Thing’ the Narrator is unable to define.Page 28/chapter 5: ‘I ran weeping silently as a child might do.’ – the Narrator reverts back to his childlike state in this simile, denying his educated, intellectual prowess for a weakened, defenceless, vulnerable state, foreshadowing the reality of mankind against the Martians.Page 30/chapter 6: ‘They must have bolted as blindly as a flock of sheep.’ – this simile characterises the foolishness and naivety of the public as a contrast to the highly organised Martian landings and attacks; this is the precursor to the ‘two women and a little boy [who] were crushed and trampled there, and left to die amid the terror and the darkness.’ – Wells’ comment on the sacrificial nature of humanity and social systems, offering the vulnerable and weak to save the elite (see also the shop man episode in Ch. 5 as an example of the irony of humans causing the first deaths rather than the Martians themselves).Page 31/chapter 7: ‘My terror had fallen from me like a garment.’ – this simile reflects the notion of the burdensome nature of fear felt by the Narrator, but also the ability to discard this fear arbitrarily, suggesting the lack of credibility felt towards the threat of the Martians.Page 35/chapter 7: ‘We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear.’ – this metaphor/allegory of the dodo here used as an ironic allusion to colonialism’s dark history and very much comparable to (page 59) ‘so indiscriminate and so universal’ of the Martians’ own violence.Page 38/chapter 8: ‘In the centre, sticking into the skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart, was this cylinder.’ – this simile brings together progressive technology of the Martians in the ‘cylinder’ and antiquated warfare of the ‘poisoned dart’, suggesting the span of power the Martians hold and the inability of Military defences to combat any such attacks; the personification of Earth generates a longevity to its existence, but at the same time implies that this existence is now fragile in the face of the Martian assault.Page 38/chapter 8: ‘The fever of war that would presently clog vein and artery, deadening nerve and destroy brain, had still to develop.’ – the metaphor of progressive disease suggests an inability to defend, thus an inevitable defeat at the hands of the Martians; the adverb ‘presently’ creates a sense of the inescapable doom and threat, yet the irony that this is unacknowledged by mankind is its hubris; the multi-clausal sentence structure adds to the sense of delaying the inevitable submission and defeat, prolonging the agony, as it were.Personification Page 25/chapter 5: ‘…this was death leaping from man to man…’ – the active, dynamic verbs personifying death are ironic in that it brings lifelessness in a vibrant, lively manner.Page 26/chapter 5: ‘as if an invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn through the heather...death had swept full circle’ – personification of heat ray and death to humanise the terror of threat.Page 30/chapter 6: ‘They saw the flashes and the men falling and an invisible hand, as it were, lit the bushes as it hurried towards them…’ – the ‘hand’ and ‘finger’ of these quotations humanises the threat, ironically, as if this is a destruction brought on by mankind itself – could this be Wells’ comment on humanity’s punishment for its own flaws? Or is this purely the Narrator’s inability to characterise the Martians in any other way that his own limited language/experience? (Ludwig Wittgenstein: ‘The limits of my language are the limits of my world.’ = What we can’t express, we can’t understand/experience.)MotifsSoundPage 20/chapter 4: ‘There was a loud shriek from a woman behind.’ And page 21/chapter 4: ‘it gave a peculiar thick cry’ – juxtaposition of these sound motifs creates a startling similarity between the Martians and humans; Wells’ keen sense of irony highlights human ignorance and hubris: these sounds progress throughout the novel as a symbol of the Martians' growing power and supremacy from their ‘cry' here to the ‘aloo' of chapter 10/page 51 and the ‘ulla' book 2, chapter 8/page 179, which signify their communicative mastery and domination over mankind. Then consider the ‘silence’ after the Martians perish and the Narrator’s reaction – what does this symbolise?Light and darknessPage 25/chapter 5: ‘flash of light...seemed to darken...remain the darker after their dispersal...flashed out pallid green...ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it...a bright glare...flashed into white flame...’ – this juxtaposition continues throughout the chapter (pages 25-27) as a stark reminder of the destructive force of the Martians compared to the vulnerability of mankind: the motif represents an ominous warning of the fragility of humanity and life.NarrationPage 23/chapter 5: ‘What could be going on there?’ – Wells uses the chronology of his narrative and Narrator’s perspective to render readers vulnerable as characters would have been, reflecting the zeitgeist of 19th Century unrest/fears of invasion; rhetorical question becomes reflective of ignorance of humanity.Page 23/chapter 5: ‘Evidently they shared my mental conflict.’ – Narrator’s observations ensure his own views are validated; poioumena (self-aware narrator) instils at once a sense of confidence and doubt in his reliability – ambiguous.Page 24/chapter 5: Dialogue between neighbour and Narrator and then they ‘became silent’ – neighbour’s exclamations are reflective of self-centred, emotive reaction, whereas the Narrator’s question suggests a desire for knowledge and regard for humanity.Page 32/chapter 7: ‘At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside…out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.’ – poioumena here reveals Narrator’s struggle with his storytelling and story-making; he is at once involved and reliable, yet distanced and unreliable, making his omniscience ambiguous – this is corroborated when he reasserts Ogilvy’s claims of the ‘impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves on the earth’ to his wife (page 33/chapter 7), here playing the stereotype of the 19th C protective husband to her 19th C inferior woman; he clings to Ogilvy’s rationale, yet refers to it as ‘general opinion’ later (page 34) thus suggesting his lack of scientific claim despite his attempts to use heavy scientific lexis; his reliability here is questionable and the rest of the chapter serves to bolster his hubristic pride (evidenced ironically in very domestic metaphors) to foreshadow the inevitable downfall of mankind (note the cliffhanger) at the true threat and might of the Martians.IronyPage 24/chapter 5: ‘there had been a hasty consultation and, since the Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms, intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them…that we were intelligent too.’ – criticism of human superiority and hubris; ‘hasty’ denotes the rush and carelessness of the reaction to the invasion, perhaps also the fear; the clausal breaks portray the condescension of the Narrator as symbolic of mankind’s view of the Martians/others; the irony of the mirrored adjective ‘intelligent’ foreshadows the inevitable defeat of mankind at the hands of the Martians as it depicts the foolish, rash and blinkered attempts to nullify the threat against British might and power.Colour imageryChapter 5: ‘black figures...luminous greenish smoke...grey and pale under the deep blue sky...black specks with the flag of white’ – ominous, threatening imagery is reminiscent of hellish imagery; the absence of brighter colours implies the rise of malevolent powers.Chapter 8/page 38: ‘a puff of greenish-white smoke whirled up to the starlight sky.’ – a vivid, sinister contrast to the purist light imagery; the backdrop of ‘stars’ are prevalent throughout the novel, particularly considering Mars is linked to the God of War in Roman mythology (In Greek mythology, Ares was the God of war and was a destructive and threatening force; in Roman mythology, the God of war, Mars represented military power as a way to secure peace) – ‘morning star of hope’ = Earth (page 4/5); ‘for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war’ (page 5).RepetitionLook at the Heat Ray firing episode in Chapter 5. Consider the repetition of various forms of the words, ‘slow', ‘still', ‘sudden' and ‘swift'. There is real sense of purpose in Wells' cohesion here in his structure of the chapter through these words...the way he builds and delays tension, progresses towards climax, creates horror and confusion, and then mutes these with silence and isolation towards the end of the chapter (note here the emotive triple and couplet, ‘helpless, unprotected, and alone' and ‘panic terror', at the denouement of the chapter – a shift in the strong, authoritative narrative voice readers have become accustomed to in the opening chapters, and especially contrasting the opening of the chapter when the Narrator feels ‘passionate longing to peer into' the pit).Context and narrative structurePage 36/chapter 8: ‘it certainly did not make the sensation that an ultimatum to Germany would have done.’ – 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm II ascension – aggressive expansionist foreign policy to rival Imperial Britain dominance (akin to the Martians’ view of Earth); asymmetrical warfare (like humans and Martians) due to dominance of British Naval force resulted in German’s race to rival British Navy and increased global tensions; rise of Invasion Literature genre after George Chesney’s Battle of Dorking led to fear of European threat of war and lack of faith in defences.Page 38/chapter 8: ‘All night long the Martians were hammering and stirring, sleepless and indefatigable, at work upon the machines they were making ready’ vs ‘A colonel from the regiment came to the Chobham bridge and was busy questioning the crowd at midnight.’ – Acute juxtaposition between the organisation and commitment of the Martians vs the ineffectiveness and disarray of the military, foreshadowing the inevitable conquering of mankind; Wells is critical of the defences and reactions to invasion perhaps as a wider criticism of the lack of system/structure for defence of the nation; this representation of the military continues into chapter 9 with the haphazard dress of the soldiers, their in-fighting, their lack of education and their ironic low expectation of the Martians (pages 40-43) as an ominous warning for the future of Earth under the Martians.Religious allegory and intertextualityYou now need to review the slides I emailed you about the Biblical book of Revelation and Chapters 9-10 (page 43-50).Now consider the start of the ‘road narrative’ section (pages 65-71/chapter 12), particularly the Biblical allusions to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis) and the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus) at the Thames and how Wells generates foreshadowing, tension, inevitability, action, suspense, hysteria and pace through these.Next StepsFollowing this, the Curate, the Narrator’s brother, and the re-emergence of the Artilleryman and the Narrator’s Wife are all significant characterisation and plot devices to consider carefully at the end of Book One and in Book Two. Thunder Child (Chapter 17) also offers great perspectives of asymmetrical warfare, military and naval competency, man vs Martian, fear of invasion, machine vs nature.I hope this has been useful. I wish you all the very best of luck. Mrs R ................
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