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| The war of the worlds
The war of the worlds
The war of the worlds
Summary of the plot
The story is told in the first person by a writer. In
1985 astronomers notice ten puffs of smoke coming from the side of the planet.
As they later discover, these explosions are ten missiles which are fired off at
the earth. The planet is older than the earth and so the colling process is more
advanced, the inhabitants therefore have to find another planet in order to
escape destruction. The first falling star lands near Woking, outside London,
and makes an enormous pit in the earth with it’s impact. It has the shape
of a huge cylinder. Ogilvy, an astronomer, goes to the pit and notices, that the
circular top of the still hot cylinder is beginning to unscrew and he knows that
something alive is inside. As the story of the projectile is written in the
newspapers, a crowd of curious people collects round the pit. A man, who
descends into the pit, is killed by a strange creature that is looking out of
the lid of the cylinder. This creature has got a huge head-body, about four
feet, with a face in front and round the mouth are sixteen whip-like tentacles.
The onlookers run away quickly and after these events a deputation with a white
flag goes forward to communicate with the Martians, they are killed by a heat
ray of the Martian and all the countryside around is ablaze. In London, they
don’t take the Martian invasion seriously. In the following hours the
sound of hammering can be heard from the pit and at about midnight, the second
cylinder lands near Woking. The army is organised and they fight the cylinder
and the writer and his wife, who where sitting in their house first, hire a
dogcar and escape to Leatherhead when they hear the sounds firing and see all
the houses collapsing. He leaves his wife with his cousin in Letherhead and
drives back to Woking at night. A thunderstorm is beginning and he sees the
third falling star. He then sees the Martians advancing in their Fighting
Machines. These are monstruous tripods, walking engines of glittering metal with
long flexible tentacles and a kind of arm which carries a metallic case from
which comes the Heat-Ray. They go striding over the country howling and hooting
to each other. The writer’s cart is overturned and his horse killed, but
he escapes and continues to his house.While hiding there he is joined by an
artilleryman whose regiment has been wiped out. The next day the writer tries to
go to Leatherhead to join his wife, but the railways have been destroyed and the
roads are filled with refugees. Near the Thames he is involved into a battle
between the army and the Martians and the writer is nearly killed, but he
manages to escape. At the battle one of the tripods is destroyed by a shell.
More cylinders land and the Martians are busy transferring everything from them
to the original pit in Horsell Common. Here they prepare their next attack.
After this battle at the Thames he meets a curate while he is resting under a
hedge. This clergyman is a very hysterical man who believes that the end of the
world has come.
In the meantime the writer’s young brother, a
medical student, witnesses the landing of the Martians in London. At first there
is not much in the newspapers, then the first fugitives from West Surrey arrive
in the streets. The trains are disorganised and on Sunday evening a
provclamation is published telling the people to keep calm. Early in the next
morning a policeman knocks at the doors telling the people to leave. The
writer’s brother takes some money and goes out. In the meantime the
tripods have advanced again from their pit. This time they hold thick black
tubes; when they throw them down, the cannisters break and thick clouds of
poisonous black smoke come out, killing everything in the neighbourhood. In
London the panic mounts and the streets are full of carts, cyclists, horsemen
and one or two motorcars. Outside London the writer’s brother encounters
two ladies in a pony- chaise who are beeing attacket by some men. He fights the
men off and drives on with the ladies. As they have enough money with them, they
decide to go to the coast and by a passage on a boat to France. There are
terrible scenes on the road and they see people killed in the mad rush from
London. After having reached Essex coast, where there is a number of ships lying
to take off the refugees, they get onto a steamer bound for Ostend which waits
to take on as many people as possible. Suddenly some of those tripods appear,
striding over the land and wading in the water. They are attacket by a
torpedo-ram and one of the Martians is hit. When the martians fire their heat-
ray on the water a boiling tumult of steam hides everything. The steamer is able
to get away and from the decks the passengers see a huge disc flying over the
horizon.
In the meantime the writer and the curate go on through
the devestated country and break into an empty house to get food. Suddenly there
is a crash and the house is almost destroyed, except for the kitchen in which
they are. It is the fifth cylinder, which has landed on the house. Through a
crack in the wall they can observe the Martians climbing out of their cylinder
and setting to work in their pit. They have Handling Machines which put quickly
together the fighting machines. They realize that the Martians do not eat but
they inject the blood of living humans into their bodies. They store the humans
they have picked up in baskets on their backs, and when they are hungry they
take them out. They do not speak to one another, their hooting and howling is
the noise they make when preparing to eat.The two men lie for some days in the
ruins of the house with only a little food. The writer tries to force the curate
to ration out the food and drink but he is hysterical and undisciplined and in
the end he becomes mad. He starts to shriek and sing one day so that the writer
kills him with the butt of an axe. A Martian has heard the noise and climbs into
the kitchen to search. The writer hides in the coal-cellar and hears the Martian
lokking for him and carrying off the curate’s dead body. On the fifteenth
day he hears a dog and at last ventures out to find the place in ruins, a red
weed growing over everything and a terrible stillness. He wanders through the
deserted streets of London, passing many dead bodies and breaking into houses
for remains of food. He again meets the artilleryman who has some strange
philosophic ideas of the future of Man under Martian government. He thinks a
company of intellegent scientists should live in the drains of London and not
give in to the Martian rulers. The writer spends the night with him playing
cards and drinking. But then he feels to be a traitor to his wife and his kind
if he hides in the drains of London and apart from that he doesn’t think
that the ideas of the artilleryman won’t be realizable. He decides to
leave this strange dreamer and goes on into London to learn what the Martians
and the rest of the humans are doing. On his way he encounters a Martian
standing still and howling and he realizes that it is dying. Then he sees dogs
eating the remains of other dead Martians and realizes that the end of the war
has come. The Martians are not able to resist the disease bacteria of the earth.
He comes to a huge rampart which they have made and sees their wrecked machines
and about fifty Martians lying dead at the bottom. There is also a great flying
machine with which they have been experimenting.The writer stands praising God
and weeping and then loses his mind. He is found by some kind people who take
care of him for some time. When he recovers they tell him that Leatherhead has
been quite destroyed. He goes back in despair to his empty house in Woking and
while he is standing by the window he sees his wife come in.
In the meantime the joyful news of the Martians‘
defeat has been sent to all the other cities of the world and food is sent to
England to the starving people. Bread is distributed from the churches and the
Londoners stream back to London.
The writer thinks that there is still a danger of
another invasion from Mars, and that it is a good thing that the inhabitants of
the earth are no longer complacent in their feeling of security and that they
have benefited by the knowledge of the machines which the Martians brought with
them.
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