The War of the Worlds - 1897 by Herbert George Wells

PRESENTATION

The purpose of this novel is to present a thesis of moral philosophy.

Therefore, if you were looking for a story that told about war strategies on the battlefield, combat tactics, description of the units in action, description of the personality of the commanders or even the personal story of heroic soldiers who face the cruel invaders with gritted teeth, ... Well, this isn't the book for you.

It is difficult to say whether the moral purpose of this narrative of events is to condemn the callous violence of the invading Martians or, rather, to recognize that the law of the strongest does not guide the actions of peoples only on planet Earth, but also on other civilized planets much more than ours.

Perhaps, the purpose of the novel is precisely to admit that we cannot call ourselves strangers to the logic of dominance and annihilation demonstrated by our alien enemies.

The novel implements a sort of cosmic nemesis which has the aim of recalling our conscience of Western civilization and making us critically rethink our Eurocentric morality, by virtue of which we feel entitled to exempt ourselves from any judgment made on us by others peoples of the Earth.

Therefore, the purpose of this book is above all aimed at the European reader, it is an invitation to reflect on the meaning of one's identity as a highly advanced people and on the meaning of the policies of Western civilization in the world. In this sense, this narrative is full of reflections; they are those made by the protagonist, a writer from England at the end of the 19th century, who will witness dramatic events of violence and destruction.

ANALYSIS

The intolerable violence of weapons and war techniques are highlighted when narrated by those who are not used to this kind of thing. Indeed, if it is a person of noble soul such as a writer, they are described and interpreted at a more intimate level of consciousness.

This is why this novel which has war as its subject is not, as we would have expected, a typical war novel.

The story told in the novel is that of a man who makes a journey to reunite with his wife; a journey undertaken in circumstances of extreme emergency by all the civil services that constitute an advanced nation like England at the end of the 19th century.

Paralysis of public transport, paralysis of commercial services, energy, water etc., the destructive activity of the Martians causes all these things to stop and although there are attempts to employ them to save the population or to benefit military defense activities, the very simple goal of returning home from a town near London now seems like a hopeless undertaking.

This is the most suitable narrative scenario to show how devastating the action of a military invasion can be in the eyes of a citizen accustomed to thinking about the benefits of his daily existence in view of a future of peace and prosperity.

For this reason, although the title of the novel mentions a war theme, the war we are talking about is described in an external way, not by those who commit it, but by those who are witnesses and victims of it.

However, the narrative is always very exhaustive with information and descriptions which never make one feel the lack of a point of view within the terrestrial military organization taking part in the conflict.

Completeness of information

In this novel the completeness of information is always fully guaranteed, for everything concerning the protagonist, the characters he meets during his journey and, above all, in the narrative which has the Martians as its object.

Especially for the science fiction part, we learn who the author of the invasion is (the Martians), and what they intend to do on our planet (colonization), thus, explaining not only the actions they carry out but also their ultimate goal, we have the complete picture of what is happening.

In fact, towards the end an activity of insertion of a Martian botanical species is described with the aim of transforming the Earth into a habitable colony for Martians. This information is not so obvious, as there are many stories of this kind where the invasion, the war, are described, but not the objective that the invaders have.

The numerous references to the colonial activities of the British Empire also indicate well the historical moment in which the narrated events occur.

Scientific verisimilitude

It is perhaps thanks to the abundance of technical and scientific descriptions that scientific verisimilitude becomes the strong point of this novel.

The appearance of the Martians, their behavior, their technology, are all things that acquire a sense of credibility and realism thanks to technical, scientific, social, moral and biological reasoning.

It is no coincidence that director Orson Welles used part of this novel to carry out his famous radio prank, thereby causing panic among radio listeners.

However, H. G. Wells creates the masterpiece of scientific verisimilitude when he explains that terrestrial bacteria and viruses, harmless to us, proved lethal to aliens due to the lack of adequate immune defenses in their bodies.

What better solution, elegant and correct from a scientific point of view, could a narrator find?

This narrative invention will suggest similar solutions for their stories to many writers of the future, up to and including the 'spores' inhaled by Earthlings on the alien planet in the 2017 film 'Alien Covenant'.

Creativity in Fantasy

In this respect, the novel does not show a great imagination of events and descriptions.

The description of the Martians is appreciable, to which the author intentionally attributes strange and inadequate features to the gravitational and atmospheric conditions of our planet, with the sole aim of making them appear alien even in their physical constitution to the detriment, however, of the scientific credibility of individuals capable of building machinery.

The Martians, therefore, have the appearance of oblong sacks with eyes, which move with a certain number of tentacles.

Interesting is the invention of the shape of the Martian war machines: the famous tripods.

These machines, although they have a cockpit that resembles the body of the Martians, are equipped with three very long legs which, as the protagonist explains, present the victims of the invaders with an image of their oppressors that does not correspond to reality.

The more fear machines instill in Earthlings, the more ridiculous and clumsy real Martians appear.

As regards the modest imagination that the author has demonstrated in the narrated facts and in the symbolic meanings that are part of them, it is not surprising that in this novel the author has made this choice.

Wells was interested in using this story as a metaphor for the colonial policies of European nations and therefore had an interest in making the fictional events of the narrative reflect those real, well-known and well-known events of human history.

The ending and its moral

Therefore, for the purposes of the ability to impose oneself to the detriment of others, the magnitude of the means employed and the violence used have little importance when the universal laws of nature allow invisible life forms to break down your defenses, without you first realizing it that it's all over.

In the novel's finale, universal justice triumphs not in the interests of the human peoples of planet Earth, but as a warning not to follow the same path of abuse cruelly traced by the Martians.

The exact metaphor of this moral ending is constituted by the protagonist who, finally, can embrace his wife again after having witnessed the collapse of 'Eurocentric pride' of which, now, only the rubble can be seen and rethink his own identity and his own future, clutching what is most precious in life: love.