60 pages • 2 hours read
H. G. WellsThe War of the Worlds
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1898A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Light, Darkness, and Color
Wells uses light, darkness, and color symbolically throughout the novel. Chiefly, these images fullfil three purposes.
Firstly, artificial lights function as symbols of civilization, both human and Martian. Chapter 1 ends with the narrator’s wife pointing out “the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky,” which the narrator says, “seemed so safe and tranquil” (11). In this instance and elsewhere, humans take comfort in the lights of their civilization as signs of its strength and stability. Of course, the Martians make lights of their own. From their first perceivable appearance via telescope as “a great light […] on the illuminated part of” Mars to the flashes that indicate the launching of their cylinders to those cylinders’ bright descents to the lights of their weapons and work (7), these indications of their civilization’s own power surely have a similarly encouraging impact for them.
Secondly, the color red, so deeply associated with their planet, appears as a symbol of the Martians. The flashes from their planet are red, and their arrival on Earth immediately casts the narrator’s surroundings in a conspicuous redness, such as when the narrator and his wife prepare to leave their hometown: “The sun, shining through the smoke that drove up from the tops of the trees, seemed blood-red, and threw an unfamiliar lurid light upon everything” (46). Later, before fleeing London, the narrator’s brother attempts to get a handle on the situation under “one of the most peaceful skies it is possible to imagine, a sky of gold, barred with long transverse stripes of reddish-purple cloud” (84), a symbolic representation of the insidious Martian advance on England. Finally, as the narrator approaches mental collapse after the curate’s death, convinced that Martian victory is inevitable, he describes the light as “no longer gray, but red […] the color of blood” (157).
Finally, light and darkness, often in the form of day and night, serve as symbols of humanity’s prospects. The narrator is unable to see into the first cylinder because “I had the sunset in my eyes” (22)—foreshadowing the sunset of humankind. Later, the narrator describes the lights from the Martians’ terrifying weaponry as “so bright that the deep blue sky […] seemed to darken abruptly […] and to remain the darker after their dispersal” (27). Darkness in general takes on a more terrifying aspect for the narrator throughout his harrowing experiences. Despite clearly enjoying the darkness of a few nights prior when strolling about with his wife, the narrator becomes as terrified of “the dusk and stillness all about me” as he is of the Martians (29). The Black Smoke, which ends in “night and extinction—nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapor hiding its dead” (100) especially emphasizes this symbolism. Conversely, the return of light—”the evening star trembl[ing] into sight” as the narrator’s brother leaves England (123), the “dazzlingly bright” and “glowing blue” light of day as the narrator escapes the ruined house (158), and, most significantly, the Martian pit remaining “still in darkness” even as “the rising sun struck the world to fire about me with his rays” (185) at the moment the narrator realizes the Martians are dead—embodies the promise of humanity’s survival.
Flora
Plants appear as symbols throughout the novel, often representing the needless destruction brought about by struggles for power, as well as the apathy of the natural world to such struggles. As the conflict begins, the narrator’s neighbor offers him “a handful of strawberries” while talking of the nearby “burning of the pine-woods” (42), establishing a contrast between the impacts of peace and war on the natural world. Still, the natural world carries on. As the narrator and his wife flee their burning hometown, “[t]he scent of hay was in the air through the lush meadows beyond Pyrford, and the hedges on either side were sweet and gay with multitudes of dog-roses” (49). Even many of those plants affected by the conflict persevere as symbols of nature’s unflagging resistance: “[F]or the most part the trees had fallen, but a certain proportion still stood, dismal gray stems, with dark-brown foliage instead of green” (63).
While the red weed functions similarly, with the narrator even taking advantage of its neutrality by hiding amongst it and trying to eat it, its alienness imbues Earthly flora with greater value. The narrator describes his eyes as “relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating drift” (129), and the climactic moment of the novel occurs as the narrator “hurried through the red weed [...] and emerged upon the grass before the rising of the sun” (184). The immense value of flora is best exemplified through the attempts of “one shrivelled old fellow” to save his “flower-pots containing orchids” from being left behind during an evacuation (66). He tells the exasperated narrator, “these is vallyble” (66), remaining by them as the narrator hurries on.
Fauna
Animals in the novel fulfill a similar function to that of plants, representing even more viscerally nature’s indifference to the affairs of so-called intelligent life. After the first Martian attack, horses carry on “feeding out of nose-bags or pawing the ground” (24), their riders exterminated. This contrast is most clearly demonstrated as the narrator beholds what is for him the single most disturbing sight of the whole novel: Martians harvesting humans for their blood. As this occurs, “[o]ver and through it all went the bats, heeding it not at all” (148).
While this apathy may seem to border on the crass, the unflagging and unemotional commitment of animals to survival makes motifs of them which presage the narrator’s slow awakening to the defeat of the Martians. While he often falls victim to overthinking and so fails to notice signs that the situation may have improved, the animals he encounters, particularly birds and dogs, simply take advantage of what opportunities they have to survive. A dog alerts the narrator to the possibility of escape from the ruined house, dogs and birds scavenging the remains of the Martians inform him of their demise, and even the artilleryman acquires his survival skills in part from observations of birds. Wells selects an even humbler lifeform to drive this idea home: “I came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the trees. I stopped to look at them, drawing a lesson from their stout resolve to live” (165).
Finally, animals appear as a motif for comparison, the narrator frequently paralleling their helplessness in the face of human technology with human helplessness against the Martians. He compares himself and humans to dodos, ants, bees, rabbits, and rats, to name a few, selecting animals that are perceived as particularly awkward, stupid, or insignificant. These comparisons underscore the extreme lesson in humility the Martians deliver, which leaves the narrator feeling “no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel” (159).
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By H. G. Wells
