No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own.
The novel’s opening lines set the stage for the collision between science and fiction. The quote is also quite effective for its chilling presentation of a situation that presages the eventual horrors that will take place. At the time it was written—and even today—the idea of the earth being under surveillance by creatures from beyond the stars was sufficiently conceivable to be absolutely terrifying.
Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
Wells assumes that aliens with the ability to travel through space and invade Earth would be so advanced that humanity would be to them as animals are to humans. This quote has influenced the entire genre of science fiction: numerous books, TV shows, and movies depicting alien creatures compare their superiority to humans by comparing the superiority of humans to amoebae. This fear is only intensified by the fact that these creatures have been watching us.
By three, people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station; revolvers were fired, people stabbed, and the policemen who had been sent to direct the traffic, exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the people they were called out to protect.
This quote describes the chaos that the Martian invasion has caused in London—which, only a few hours previously, was a calm and happy city. At this point, the story is beginning to look like the prototype for the classic Twilight Zone episode “The Monster are Due on Maple Street," in which a group of neighbors caught in paranoia about an alien invasion begin turning on each other, allowing their alien conquerers to sit by until the humans have done all the destruction for them. It is beginning to appear as though the Martians hardly need to engage any weapons or outright offensive assaults. Just by showing up, the Martians have caused such paranoia and social upheaval that human beings have begun turning on each other. Essentially, humans are doing the work of destruction for the Martians.
"This isn’t a war… It never was a war, any more than there’s war between men and ants."
This line comes from a character known only as the artilleryman; he has just seen his unit wiped out by the Martians. Once again, Wells draws attention to the fact that humans are to the Martians as insects are to men. That is to say, the Martians are so far advanced technologically that they no longer recognize humans as anything but a slight nuisance. Within this realization is the knowledge that man can no longer be considered the most valuable creature in the universe; instead, perhaps mankind will continue to evolve until they reach the state the Martians presently occupy—provided they survive the attack.
The most extraordinary thing to my mind, of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of the series of events that was to topple that social order headlong.
This observation points to a key theme of the book: conflict between humanity. The War of the Worlds is not only about the battle between humans and Martians but also about the conflict between the best and the worst of the human race. The best of the human race is exhibited throughout the story in many small ways, each one of which falls apart in the face of panic and confusion. The social order can last only as long as the established infrastructure remains in place. Without access to transportation, communication, and food, humans often turn on each other—though sometimes they may also engage in unexpected acts of compassion.
Then—a familiar, reassuring note—I heard a train running towards Woking.
The train is one of the most explicit symbols of order. Everything that it represents—technological innovation, transportation, conveyance of commerce within the context of a rigidly structured schedule—becomes concretized as the ultimate symbol of civilization and the possibility of survival. The fact that the narrator hears the sound of a train after the first wave of the Martian attack assures him that humanity will survive this horror.
I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel.
The narrator, a European man, has always had the innate sense that he is at the top of the hierarchy. Suddenly the Martians come in a destroy everything that he holds dear, which results in a struggle for survival as well as an identity crisis.
By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.
After the terrible Martian invasion, the narrator assures himself that he and humanity are the true possessors of the world. The book ends on this note of triumph, despite the destruction that the Martians have caused.
A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned warmachines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in His wisdom, has put upon this earth.
This is how the Martians are defeated—not through human weapons, but rather due to a mere microbe. Just as so many of the most infamous criminals of all time have been captured not due to concerted investigative techniques, but rather due to a broken taillight or a stop sign, so too are the Martians conquered not through concerted military response but rather by their own ignorance of their lack of resistance to earthbound bacteria. This death tragically parallels the deaths of Native Americans due to smallpox and other diseases to which they had no immunity.
What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Do you think God has exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent.
When the narrator encounters the half-hysterical curate, certain that the tripods are instruments of God's wrath, he speaks these lines. This quote also captures one of the great themes of the novel: that the invasion of the Martians is a dramatization of destruction that humans have wrought upon each other.
