Post by Lensman on Feb 15, 2007 19:16:55 GMT 1
This is the first section in what hopefully will be developed into a full-fledged FAQ for Wells' classic novel of alien invasion. Thanks to Killraven for help with proofreading and British spellings. --Lensman, Feb 2007
[NOTE: Below is the version of my summary first posted. The current version can be found at:
www.freewebs.com/wotwfaq/summary.htm]
A Summary of H.G. Wells' classic novel The War of the Worlds
Early in the twentieth century, ten huge gas explosions were observed on the planet Mars, each following the last by exactly one day. Later, one evening in southeast England a green meteorite was observed falling to earth. The astronomer Ogilvy investigated and found a large crater near Woking, southwest of London. Inside the crater was an enormous metal cylinder, one end of which was very slowly unscrewing. He spread the news and soon the newspapers had the story.
The next day the Narrator, a writer living nearby, heard the news and joined some spectators gathered at the crater. The unscrewing continued until the end of the cylinder fell off. Nightmarish Martians emerged; giant, bear-sized heads without bodies, having large eyes, oily brown skin, a drooling V-shaped mouth, and bunches of tentacles. The onlookers retreated in horror.
After some hours, Ogilvy and a few others advanced in a group towards the pit, waving a white flag. A light suddenly shone from the crater, and one by one the men burst into flame. These were the first victims of the Martians' terrible beam weapon, the Heat Ray. The Martians then set afire much of the nearby countryside, along with many of the onlookers. The Narrator escaped and ran home. News of the disaster caused British troops to be sent to the area. That night the second cylinder fell not many miles from the first.
The next afternoon, a Heat Ray at long distance started setting fire to the Narrator's town. He fled east with his wife to stay with relatives in Leatherhead. Late that night he journeyed home to return a borrowed horse and cart. Along the way he first saw one of the Martians' fighting machines, or tripods. These were three-legged vehicles a hundred feet high, with tentacles like ropes of steel, capable of uprooting a young pine tree, and each tripod carried a Heat Ray. The tripod advanced to stand guard over the third cylinder, which had already landed.
The Narrator found his house intact, and out the window he saw fiery chaos; the countryside set ablaze, a wrecked train, and distant tripods striding across the landscape. He was visited by a British soldier-- the Artilleryman-- whose unit had been wiped out by a Heat Ray. The Artilleryman related how the Martians had crawled out of their pit under cover of a huge "metal shield". Later this "shield" had staggered up on tripod legs to become a Martian fighting machine, which left to defend the unopened second cylinder.
Later that morning the two left together, the Narrator planning to circle north around the destruction and rejoin his wife in Leatherhead. They encountered refugees burdened with household goods, and soldiers who knew nothing of the danger of the Heat Ray. Desperate people were savagely fighting for seats on the trains still running. Sounds of heavy guns-- British artillery-- were heard at a distance. Approaching the Thames river, they encountered five tripods attacking a town. The Narrator jumped into the water to escape a Heat Ray. A hidden British battery (an artillery unit in place and ready to fire) managed to destroy one tripod, which collapsed into the heated river. The surviving Martians retreated to their first pit, near Woking.
Separated from the Artilleryman, the Narrator drifted downstream towards London, leaving the river in early evening. There he was joined by the Curate, a junior member of the clergy. The Curate believed the Martians had been sent as punishment, lamenting "Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done?" The Narrator soon realised his companion was on the edge of insanity.
The government finally understood just how dangerous the Martian invaders were. Troops and artillery poured into the area as refugees continued to flee. But the Heat Ray kept the soldiers from surviving any approach closer than a mile from the Martians' stronghold.
The story now switches to the viewpoint of the Narrator's brother, a medical student living in London. In the days immediately following the landing of the first cylinder, although the newspapers were filled with more and more alarming stories, life in the great city of London continued unchanged. The Brother was finally alerted to the danger by first-hand accounts from a growing stream of refugees. Then late one night he was awakened by the cry "The Martians are coming!" as church bells across Great Britain's capital rang the alarm.
A newspaper carried an official warning of the dangers of Black Smoke, poison gas emitted in gigantic, hill-sized clouds from canisters the Martians fired from bazooka-like guns. Black Smoke had destroyed the army's batteries, and the Martians' advance towards the heart of London was now unopposed. Even warships brought up the Thames River turned and retreated as their crews mutinied.
The Brother hastily gathered his money and prepared to flee as the city gradually descended into chaos. Fights broke out in railroad stations and at docks along the Thames. As the day progressed, police were unable to maintain order; riots and gunfire followed. Panic grew as trains stopped running and Black Smoke drifted down the Thames towards the main docks. Many refugees were trampled to death.
The Brother bicycled northwest out of London, then turned east. In the evening he encountered Mrs. and Miss Elphinstone; ruffians were attempting to steal their pony and buggy. After they forced the villains to flee, the Brother and the ladies continued east, traveling together. After camping for the night, they came to the Great North Road, a highway leading out of London which had become a dust-choked "boiling stream of people". Only with the greatest difficulty did the Brother manage to force their buggy into the horde of desperate and haggard refugees, whose press was so great they were in danger of being wrecked and trampled at every instant. Edging across the road as they were relentlessly carried northward, they finally managed to leave the "din and confusion indescribable" behind, and continued eastward toward the coast.
That night the Brother saw the sixth cylinder fall in the distance, then the seventh a day later. Food was running short amongst the refugees, and armed farmers were out defending their livestock and granaries. The next day, around noon the trio arrived at the coast, where ships of every type and nationality were present, attracted by refugees offering any price for passage across the English Channel to safety in France.
By paying an outrageous sum, the Brother was able to buy passage for the trio on a paddle steamer. But the steamship lingered at the coast until late afternoon, taking on more and more passengers until it was dangerously overcrowded. Only when sounds of distant guns were heard did the steamer disembark.
As the ship began to move, tripods were spotted on the distant shore. Three of them rapidly strode near and waded out into the water towards the ships. A British warship, the ironclad HMS Thunder Child, swiftly moved in to confront the invaders. A Black Smoke canister was fired at the Thunder Child, but it merely bounced off as the naval vessel advanced, holding its fire. Retreating, one tripod fired its Heat Ray. The beam easily cut through the ironclad's armour and raised a great cloud of steam. The Thunder Child's guns answered, and the tripod was cut down. Spouting flame from every vent and port, the British warship headed straight for another Martian fighting machine, which struck back with its own Heat Ray. The ironclad exploded, but the flaming wreckage, still driving forward, "crumpled him up like a thing of cardboard" to wild cheers from refugees on every ship in sight.
The paddle steamer continued its escape towards France. In the evening, the Brother caught a glimpse of the Martians' flying machine, "something broad and flat and very large", which took off and dropped canisters of Black Smoke over the landscape.
Black Smoke was rendered harmless, inert, upon exposure to water, and the Martians' tripods carried hoses from which they squirted high-pressure steam to dissipate the poison gas. The Narrator and the Curate had spent two days trapped in a house by Black Smoke, until a tripod came through the area, emitting clouds of steam which made it safe to travel in their area again.
The two continued on into the city of London. Strewn along the way were the bodies of men and horses, plus baggage from the refugees, all covered with a layer of black dust. Crossing a bridge, the Narrator for the first time noticed the Martian Red Weed, which was growing wildly, swiftly choked all the waterways, and which soon would overgrow much of the countryside. They encountered a tripod pursuing human survivors, picking them up with its tentacles and dropping them into a great metal basket attached to the rear of the fighting machine. After this they hid in a ditch, then snuck from cover to cover.
At Sheen they were ransacking houses for food when there was a bright green blaze from outside, a horrendous concussion, and the house collapsed around them. When dawn came they peeked out and discovered the fifth cylinder had smashed down just across the street from the very house they were in! Over successive days the two hid, trapped in the house, scarcely daring to move lest any noise betray their presence to the Martians.
Since their hiding place was on the edge of the crater, the Narrator was able to observe the Martians' activities closely. He saw the Martians' handling-machine, a five-legged vehicle equipped with a wide variety of manipulators and tentacles, used for construction and moving objects. He also saw the Martians' horrific method of feeding-- they took fresh blood from a living victim, most often a human being, and injected it directly into their own veins, using a pipette (a narrow tube). During the days of their confinement, he observed two men dragged into a circle of feeding Martians, who cheerfully hooted while their victims shrieked and were killed. Red Weed grew to cover the walls of the pit.
Cooped up in the house for day upon day, the Narrator found it increasingly hard to put up with the Curate, who muttered an endless monologue, cried for hours on end, and refused to ration their food and water, instead gobbling it down. His ranting and lamentations grew louder, until on the eighth day he began shouting and made for the door, to go outside. The Narrator struck down the Curate with the butt of a meat chopper. Alerted by the noise, a questing handling-machine tentacle came into the house, dragged out the body of the Curate, and came dangerously close to discovering the Narrator himself.
As more days passed, the Narrator suffered so much from lack of water he became delirious at times. Only when he heard a dog outside, on the fifteenth day, did he dare to peek out. He found the pit entirely deserted; the Martians and their machines were gone. Even the cylinder had disappeared.
After the dazed Narrator ate some raw vegetables from a garden, he continued towards the heart of London, walking through an alien landscape. Red Weed grew everywhere, even festooning the trees. Eventually he found areas less infested with the Red Weed, and broke into an inn at Putney Hill to spend the night. But he slept little; his mind was too full of worry and horrific memories.
The next morning he encountered another refugee, whom he recognised-- it was the Artilleryman. The soldier related that the Martians had gathered in a great camp at Hampstead, and he had not seen them nearer for five days. The Artilleryman was convinced all hope of stopping the invaders was lost. "This isn't a war," he said. "It never was a war, any more than there's a war between man and ants." But, he said, the Martians had not really even gotten started with their plans. Eventually people would be gathered up and put into cages, then fattened up to feed the Martians. Some humans, he said, would be kept as pets.
The Artilleryman had a grandiose plan of forming a band of resistance fighters, living underground in the sewers of London. The resistance would learn how to use the Martians' machines, and one day turn them against the invaders. But as they talked, it became clear the Artilleryman would never actually start on making his elaborate plans a reality. The soldier related a story of some people who, one night the previous week, had managed to get the electric lights going in a small area of London, then proceeded to get drunk and party all night. With the approach of dawn a tripod had suddenly walked in and picked up scores who were too drunk or frightened to run away.
After dallying with the Artilleryman that night, playing games and drinking, the next morning the Narrator again resolved to continue, alone, to Leatherhead in search of his wife. He continued on through London. Black dust was everywhere. So was Red Weed, but white patches showed where some disease was attacking it-- it was dying. Occasional areas free of black dust were deserted and quiet. The stillness gave the city a condemned, waiting atmosphere, as though at any moment the destruction which had already visited other areas would strike.
The Narrator began to hear a sobbing cry, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," repeated endlessly. He followed the sound, which became louder as he approached. At sunset he finally saw a motionless tripod, from the top of which the noise came. Circling around for a better view, he found a wrecked handling-machine. Dogs had chewed at the remains of its Martian driver. Pushing on towards Primrose Hill, he saw another still tripod. When the loud cries abruptly ended, the silence was deafening. Late that night, on the summit of Primrose Hill the Narrator found yet another motionless fighting machine. Madness seized him, and he resolved to die by walking right up to the Martian tripod. But as he came closer and the dawn grew near, he saw a flock of birds was circling the top of the tripod; hope suddenly sprang up. Hurrying forward over the great mounds of earth piled up around the Martians' largest camp, he found birds pecking at the remains of a dead Martian.
The Narrator gazed down into the Martians' huge encampment as the sun crept into the sky. Gigantic machines were scattered about, and dozens of Martians, all dead-- "slain by the putrefactive* and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain... by the humblest things that God, in His wisdom, has put upon this earth." He turned and looked at the still forms of the Martian tripods, and across the city of London, which he realised would be saved from further destruction, then gave a prayer of thanks to heaven.
News of the Martians' death was telegraphed to Paris, and soon refugees began flooding back while church bells all across England pealed with joy. Trains started running again, and ships filled with food came from every direction to provide relief to London and its surroundings.
But of this the Narrator knew nothing, for he had lost his senses. Some kindly people took him in and cared for him some days until he recovered his wits and his strength. Gently they broke the news to him that Leatherhead had been destroyed.
As the Narrator slowly made his way back home, he saw that the great city of London was returning to life. But the signs of disaster were still everywhere; people looked starved, and half of them wore rags. At his house, he found the front door broken open. He wandered through the empty house, seeing the remains of his former life. Then he heard voices, and discovered-- wonder of wonders-- his wife and cousin had also come to investigate the deserted house! A joyful reunion followed.
In the story's epilogue, we find the Narrator is relating the events six years after the fact. He reflects on the benefits of the Martian invasion: It has shocked Britain out of its blind, Victorian optimism; study of the Martians' technology has resulted in scientific advancement; and it has helped promote the idea of the common good of mankind. But the Narrator remains haunted by his horrific memories of the Martian invasion.
______________
*"putrefactive bacteria" means bacteria which cause dead tissue to rot, or putrefy.
.
* * * * * * * * * *
[NOTE: Below is the version of my summary first posted. The current version can be found at:
www.freewebs.com/wotwfaq/summary.htm]
A Summary of H.G. Wells' classic novel The War of the Worlds
Early in the twentieth century, ten huge gas explosions were observed on the planet Mars, each following the last by exactly one day. Later, one evening in southeast England a green meteorite was observed falling to earth. The astronomer Ogilvy investigated and found a large crater near Woking, southwest of London. Inside the crater was an enormous metal cylinder, one end of which was very slowly unscrewing. He spread the news and soon the newspapers had the story.
The next day the Narrator, a writer living nearby, heard the news and joined some spectators gathered at the crater. The unscrewing continued until the end of the cylinder fell off. Nightmarish Martians emerged; giant, bear-sized heads without bodies, having large eyes, oily brown skin, a drooling V-shaped mouth, and bunches of tentacles. The onlookers retreated in horror.
After some hours, Ogilvy and a few others advanced in a group towards the pit, waving a white flag. A light suddenly shone from the crater, and one by one the men burst into flame. These were the first victims of the Martians' terrible beam weapon, the Heat Ray. The Martians then set afire much of the nearby countryside, along with many of the onlookers. The Narrator escaped and ran home. News of the disaster caused British troops to be sent to the area. That night the second cylinder fell not many miles from the first.
The next afternoon, a Heat Ray at long distance started setting fire to the Narrator's town. He fled east with his wife to stay with relatives in Leatherhead. Late that night he journeyed home to return a borrowed horse and cart. Along the way he first saw one of the Martians' fighting machines, or tripods. These were three-legged vehicles a hundred feet high, with tentacles like ropes of steel, capable of uprooting a young pine tree, and each tripod carried a Heat Ray. The tripod advanced to stand guard over the third cylinder, which had already landed.
The Narrator found his house intact, and out the window he saw fiery chaos; the countryside set ablaze, a wrecked train, and distant tripods striding across the landscape. He was visited by a British soldier-- the Artilleryman-- whose unit had been wiped out by a Heat Ray. The Artilleryman related how the Martians had crawled out of their pit under cover of a huge "metal shield". Later this "shield" had staggered up on tripod legs to become a Martian fighting machine, which left to defend the unopened second cylinder.
Later that morning the two left together, the Narrator planning to circle north around the destruction and rejoin his wife in Leatherhead. They encountered refugees burdened with household goods, and soldiers who knew nothing of the danger of the Heat Ray. Desperate people were savagely fighting for seats on the trains still running. Sounds of heavy guns-- British artillery-- were heard at a distance. Approaching the Thames river, they encountered five tripods attacking a town. The Narrator jumped into the water to escape a Heat Ray. A hidden British battery (an artillery unit in place and ready to fire) managed to destroy one tripod, which collapsed into the heated river. The surviving Martians retreated to their first pit, near Woking.
Separated from the Artilleryman, the Narrator drifted downstream towards London, leaving the river in early evening. There he was joined by the Curate, a junior member of the clergy. The Curate believed the Martians had been sent as punishment, lamenting "Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done?" The Narrator soon realised his companion was on the edge of insanity.
The government finally understood just how dangerous the Martian invaders were. Troops and artillery poured into the area as refugees continued to flee. But the Heat Ray kept the soldiers from surviving any approach closer than a mile from the Martians' stronghold.
The story now switches to the viewpoint of the Narrator's brother, a medical student living in London. In the days immediately following the landing of the first cylinder, although the newspapers were filled with more and more alarming stories, life in the great city of London continued unchanged. The Brother was finally alerted to the danger by first-hand accounts from a growing stream of refugees. Then late one night he was awakened by the cry "The Martians are coming!" as church bells across Great Britain's capital rang the alarm.
A newspaper carried an official warning of the dangers of Black Smoke, poison gas emitted in gigantic, hill-sized clouds from canisters the Martians fired from bazooka-like guns. Black Smoke had destroyed the army's batteries, and the Martians' advance towards the heart of London was now unopposed. Even warships brought up the Thames River turned and retreated as their crews mutinied.
The Brother hastily gathered his money and prepared to flee as the city gradually descended into chaos. Fights broke out in railroad stations and at docks along the Thames. As the day progressed, police were unable to maintain order; riots and gunfire followed. Panic grew as trains stopped running and Black Smoke drifted down the Thames towards the main docks. Many refugees were trampled to death.
The Brother bicycled northwest out of London, then turned east. In the evening he encountered Mrs. and Miss Elphinstone; ruffians were attempting to steal their pony and buggy. After they forced the villains to flee, the Brother and the ladies continued east, traveling together. After camping for the night, they came to the Great North Road, a highway leading out of London which had become a dust-choked "boiling stream of people". Only with the greatest difficulty did the Brother manage to force their buggy into the horde of desperate and haggard refugees, whose press was so great they were in danger of being wrecked and trampled at every instant. Edging across the road as they were relentlessly carried northward, they finally managed to leave the "din and confusion indescribable" behind, and continued eastward toward the coast.
That night the Brother saw the sixth cylinder fall in the distance, then the seventh a day later. Food was running short amongst the refugees, and armed farmers were out defending their livestock and granaries. The next day, around noon the trio arrived at the coast, where ships of every type and nationality were present, attracted by refugees offering any price for passage across the English Channel to safety in France.
By paying an outrageous sum, the Brother was able to buy passage for the trio on a paddle steamer. But the steamship lingered at the coast until late afternoon, taking on more and more passengers until it was dangerously overcrowded. Only when sounds of distant guns were heard did the steamer disembark.
As the ship began to move, tripods were spotted on the distant shore. Three of them rapidly strode near and waded out into the water towards the ships. A British warship, the ironclad HMS Thunder Child, swiftly moved in to confront the invaders. A Black Smoke canister was fired at the Thunder Child, but it merely bounced off as the naval vessel advanced, holding its fire. Retreating, one tripod fired its Heat Ray. The beam easily cut through the ironclad's armour and raised a great cloud of steam. The Thunder Child's guns answered, and the tripod was cut down. Spouting flame from every vent and port, the British warship headed straight for another Martian fighting machine, which struck back with its own Heat Ray. The ironclad exploded, but the flaming wreckage, still driving forward, "crumpled him up like a thing of cardboard" to wild cheers from refugees on every ship in sight.
The paddle steamer continued its escape towards France. In the evening, the Brother caught a glimpse of the Martians' flying machine, "something broad and flat and very large", which took off and dropped canisters of Black Smoke over the landscape.
Black Smoke was rendered harmless, inert, upon exposure to water, and the Martians' tripods carried hoses from which they squirted high-pressure steam to dissipate the poison gas. The Narrator and the Curate had spent two days trapped in a house by Black Smoke, until a tripod came through the area, emitting clouds of steam which made it safe to travel in their area again.
The two continued on into the city of London. Strewn along the way were the bodies of men and horses, plus baggage from the refugees, all covered with a layer of black dust. Crossing a bridge, the Narrator for the first time noticed the Martian Red Weed, which was growing wildly, swiftly choked all the waterways, and which soon would overgrow much of the countryside. They encountered a tripod pursuing human survivors, picking them up with its tentacles and dropping them into a great metal basket attached to the rear of the fighting machine. After this they hid in a ditch, then snuck from cover to cover.
At Sheen they were ransacking houses for food when there was a bright green blaze from outside, a horrendous concussion, and the house collapsed around them. When dawn came they peeked out and discovered the fifth cylinder had smashed down just across the street from the very house they were in! Over successive days the two hid, trapped in the house, scarcely daring to move lest any noise betray their presence to the Martians.
Since their hiding place was on the edge of the crater, the Narrator was able to observe the Martians' activities closely. He saw the Martians' handling-machine, a five-legged vehicle equipped with a wide variety of manipulators and tentacles, used for construction and moving objects. He also saw the Martians' horrific method of feeding-- they took fresh blood from a living victim, most often a human being, and injected it directly into their own veins, using a pipette (a narrow tube). During the days of their confinement, he observed two men dragged into a circle of feeding Martians, who cheerfully hooted while their victims shrieked and were killed. Red Weed grew to cover the walls of the pit.
Cooped up in the house for day upon day, the Narrator found it increasingly hard to put up with the Curate, who muttered an endless monologue, cried for hours on end, and refused to ration their food and water, instead gobbling it down. His ranting and lamentations grew louder, until on the eighth day he began shouting and made for the door, to go outside. The Narrator struck down the Curate with the butt of a meat chopper. Alerted by the noise, a questing handling-machine tentacle came into the house, dragged out the body of the Curate, and came dangerously close to discovering the Narrator himself.
As more days passed, the Narrator suffered so much from lack of water he became delirious at times. Only when he heard a dog outside, on the fifteenth day, did he dare to peek out. He found the pit entirely deserted; the Martians and their machines were gone. Even the cylinder had disappeared.
After the dazed Narrator ate some raw vegetables from a garden, he continued towards the heart of London, walking through an alien landscape. Red Weed grew everywhere, even festooning the trees. Eventually he found areas less infested with the Red Weed, and broke into an inn at Putney Hill to spend the night. But he slept little; his mind was too full of worry and horrific memories.
The next morning he encountered another refugee, whom he recognised-- it was the Artilleryman. The soldier related that the Martians had gathered in a great camp at Hampstead, and he had not seen them nearer for five days. The Artilleryman was convinced all hope of stopping the invaders was lost. "This isn't a war," he said. "It never was a war, any more than there's a war between man and ants." But, he said, the Martians had not really even gotten started with their plans. Eventually people would be gathered up and put into cages, then fattened up to feed the Martians. Some humans, he said, would be kept as pets.
The Artilleryman had a grandiose plan of forming a band of resistance fighters, living underground in the sewers of London. The resistance would learn how to use the Martians' machines, and one day turn them against the invaders. But as they talked, it became clear the Artilleryman would never actually start on making his elaborate plans a reality. The soldier related a story of some people who, one night the previous week, had managed to get the electric lights going in a small area of London, then proceeded to get drunk and party all night. With the approach of dawn a tripod had suddenly walked in and picked up scores who were too drunk or frightened to run away.
After dallying with the Artilleryman that night, playing games and drinking, the next morning the Narrator again resolved to continue, alone, to Leatherhead in search of his wife. He continued on through London. Black dust was everywhere. So was Red Weed, but white patches showed where some disease was attacking it-- it was dying. Occasional areas free of black dust were deserted and quiet. The stillness gave the city a condemned, waiting atmosphere, as though at any moment the destruction which had already visited other areas would strike.
The Narrator began to hear a sobbing cry, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," repeated endlessly. He followed the sound, which became louder as he approached. At sunset he finally saw a motionless tripod, from the top of which the noise came. Circling around for a better view, he found a wrecked handling-machine. Dogs had chewed at the remains of its Martian driver. Pushing on towards Primrose Hill, he saw another still tripod. When the loud cries abruptly ended, the silence was deafening. Late that night, on the summit of Primrose Hill the Narrator found yet another motionless fighting machine. Madness seized him, and he resolved to die by walking right up to the Martian tripod. But as he came closer and the dawn grew near, he saw a flock of birds was circling the top of the tripod; hope suddenly sprang up. Hurrying forward over the great mounds of earth piled up around the Martians' largest camp, he found birds pecking at the remains of a dead Martian.
The Narrator gazed down into the Martians' huge encampment as the sun crept into the sky. Gigantic machines were scattered about, and dozens of Martians, all dead-- "slain by the putrefactive* and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain... by the humblest things that God, in His wisdom, has put upon this earth." He turned and looked at the still forms of the Martian tripods, and across the city of London, which he realised would be saved from further destruction, then gave a prayer of thanks to heaven.
News of the Martians' death was telegraphed to Paris, and soon refugees began flooding back while church bells all across England pealed with joy. Trains started running again, and ships filled with food came from every direction to provide relief to London and its surroundings.
But of this the Narrator knew nothing, for he had lost his senses. Some kindly people took him in and cared for him some days until he recovered his wits and his strength. Gently they broke the news to him that Leatherhead had been destroyed.
As the Narrator slowly made his way back home, he saw that the great city of London was returning to life. But the signs of disaster were still everywhere; people looked starved, and half of them wore rags. At his house, he found the front door broken open. He wandered through the empty house, seeing the remains of his former life. Then he heard voices, and discovered-- wonder of wonders-- his wife and cousin had also come to investigate the deserted house! A joyful reunion followed.
In the story's epilogue, we find the Narrator is relating the events six years after the fact. He reflects on the benefits of the Martian invasion: It has shocked Britain out of its blind, Victorian optimism; study of the Martians' technology has resulted in scientific advancement; and it has helped promote the idea of the common good of mankind. But the Narrator remains haunted by his horrific memories of the Martian invasion.
______________
*"putrefactive bacteria" means bacteria which cause dead tissue to rot, or putrefy.
.
Prepare For The Future
