Martians in Wells’ War of the Worlds and Movie Adaptions: Cultural Imperialism Anonymous College

The Martians in the book and the movie The War of the Worlds are a metaphor for the evils of cultural imperialism because their arrival severs the most important means of communication and transportation technology, challenges religion, and leaves identity unclear. The Martians in The War of the Worlds can be used as a comparison to imperialism because their invasion caused the loss of major technologies on Earth and altered the way that humans saw God and the identity of their society.

The narrator in the book explains that the Martians were “hamstringing” mankind by exploding “any stores of powder” and cutting communication and transportation such as the telegraph and railways (Wells 83). This specific example is important because it shows that the Martians crippled society not only emotionally but physically. The War of the Worlds provides a great example of communication and transportation technologies being taken away and it drastically affecting people’s lives. Worth explains in his article how technology and communication technology are such a big part of imperialism when he says “technologies of communication and transport are central to the imperial critique contained within the novel” (Worth, 71). Although the...