What Lessons Might Mankind Learn From “the War Of The Worlds“

11 Pages 2771 Words

Book two, entitled “Earth Under the Martians”, focuses on their quick decline and defeat by earth’s bacteria. Book one begins with Mankind living in ignorance of the impending invasion; unaware and dismissive of any potential threat. This is followed by a rude awakening in the form of the invasion of the Martians who disrupt everything. Mankind tries to fight back but its attempts are ineffectual and futile and come to no avail. The Martians appear indestructible. Nature then steps in to defend her planet. Our bacteria, to which we are immune, proceed to kill the Martians.

Well’s characters state his final message. All human characters used in the book are representative of Victorian man. However the attitudes described: dismissivness, arrogance and complacency are timeless and apply just as much now as they did at the time the novel was written. However, the reader must not be persuaded into thinking that humanity is the main character is this tale; mankind is merely the storyteller, the narrator. The real main characters in Well’s novel are the Martians and Nature, mankind are merely the onlookers, they have no real effect on the war.

Mankind in general is portrayed as arrogant, complacent and selfish, caring only for material goods and inconsiderate of others to the extent that women and children are crushed underfoot in the search of wealth and self-preservation. These weaknesses mean we are vulnerable to attack; or grip on Earth is threatened by our own ignorance. An example of mankind’s arrogance is shown in a quote from page 5:

“At most terrestrial men fancied there might
be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to
themselves.”

This quote is a good example of mankind’s arrogance because it shows that although some people do think it could be possible for there to be life on other planets, they just assume that if there was indeed life, it would be of a lower intelligence and inferior.
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