The War of the Worlds Study Guide

Characters

• The narratorReunited with his wife, he remains troubled by nightmares, recurring memories of the destruction and uncertainty about humanity's future.First appears: Chapter 1: The Eve of the War
• The MartiansThe narrator qualifies his explanation of their deaths as probable rather than proved and warns that others may attempt another invasion.First appears: Chapter 1: The Eve of the War
• OgilvyOne of the men killed while approaching the Martians with a white flag in an attempt to communicate.First appears: Chapter 1: The Eve of the War
• The narrator's wifeShe arrives at their home with the narrator's cousin and is reunited with her husband, who catches her in his arms as she sways.First appears: Chapter 1: The Eve of the War
• HendersonThe dead journalist whose newspaper doubts his report and abandons a special edition when he cannot answer its request for confirmation.First appears: Chapter 2: The Falling Star
• StentOne of the men killed in the attempt to communicate with the Martians under a white flag.First appears: Chapter 3: On Horsell Common
• LHLord HiltonThe lord of the manor whom Ogilvy asks the narrator to approach for help keeping spectators away from the excavation.First appears: Chapter 3: On Horsell Common
• SThe shopmanA young man the narrator thinks is a Woking shop assistant, pushed into the pit by the crowd, who struggles to escape before disappearing from sight.First appears: Chapter 4: The Cylinder Opens
• LSThe landlord of the Spotted DogThe narrator finds him dead beside a fence on Maybury Hill, apparently with a broken neck.First appears: Chapter 9: The Fighting Begins
• The artillerymanHe proposes an underground society that excludes the weak and preserves science, but his limited digging and fondness for drink and games undermine the narrator's belief in him.First appears: Chapter 11: At the Window
• The curateHis loss of reason and loud confession of failing the poor alarm the narrator, who strikes him down before a Martian's machine drags him towards the opening.First appears: Chapter 13: How I Fell in with the Curate
• The narrator's brotherHe secures passage towards Ostend for himself and the two women, then watches the Thunder Child fight the Martians as their steamer escapes.First appears: Chapter 14: In London
• Mrs ElphinstoneFrightened of leaving England and still wanting to return to Stanmore and George, she is persuaded to board the steamer with her companions.First appears: Chapter 16: The Exodus from London
• Miss ElphinstoneShe shares the night watches with the narrator's brother, tries to reassure her sister-in-law and joins them aboard the steamer.First appears: Chapter 16: The Exodus from London
• LGLord GarrickIdentified as the Chief Justice, he is carried from a carriage to the roadside, dying and desperately thirsty while a companion searches for water.First appears: Chapter 16: The Exodus from London
• NRThe narrator's rescuersUnnamed people who find the narrator wandering in distress, shelter him despite their own difficulties and try to comfort him as he recovers.First appears: Chapter 9: Wreckage

Chapter summaries

1. Chapter 1: The Eve of the War

   Looking back six years, the narrator contrasts human confidence with the scrutiny of more powerful minds on Mars. He presents the cooling of their planet as the pressure driving the Martians to seek Earth's resources. His comparison with European violence against the Tasmanians challenges any easy claim that humans are more merciful than their invaders. Astronomers observe flashes on Mars, and the narrator watches one with Ogilvy, who proposes natural explanations. The narrator's later understanding exposes the limits of what either man knew while observing. Cycling, writing and a peaceful walk with his wife show ordinary concerns continuing while missiles approach unnoticed.

2. Chapter 2: The Falling Star

   The first arrival is widely mistaken for an ordinary falling star, and the narrator misses it despite sitting beside an uncovered window. Ogilvy finds the object after dawn and initially explains its internal noises as the effect of cooling. The rotating lid forces him to recognise an artificial, hollow cylinder and connect it with the flashes on Mars. His immediate concern for trapped people leads him to attempt help and then run into Woking. His disorderly appearance makes strangers dismiss him until Henderson listens, visits the cylinder and telegraphs London. The report circulating by breakfast turns an uncertain discovery into the definite story of dead men from Mars.

3. Chapter 3: On Horsell Common

   At first the cylinder attracts a small crowd, including boys who throw stones until the narrator stops them. Its outward resemblance to familiar objects makes its significance hard for spectators to grasp. The narrator believes it came from Mars but doubts that living beings are inside, imagining manuscripts and problems of translation instead. Newspaper headlines and messages to observatories bring much greater attention by the afternoon. Stent directs the excavation, but the workmen cannot get a grip on the lid to unscrew it. Asked to seek help controlling the crowd, the narrator also welcomes the chance to become a privileged spectator. He cannot find Lord Hilton at home and goes to the station to meet him.

4. Chapter 4: The Cylinder Opens

   At sunset the crowd presses around the opening cylinder, pushing a young shopman into the pit and nearly forcing the narrator onto the screw. Expectation of a broadly human occupant gives way to fragments of unfamiliar movement, eyes and tentacles. The narrator's detailed description combines the Martian's bodily weakness with his own disgust and fear. As spectators run or take cover, he remains unable to look away even while retreating. From the trees he sees the shopman struggle and vanish, but his impulse to help is defeated by terror. The deserted refreshment barrow and vehicles show an ordinary outing abruptly abandoned.

5. Chapter 5: The Heat-Ray

   Fear and curiosity keep the narrator watching the pit even as he hesitates to approach it. The apparent stillness gradually encourages spectators to move closer again. A deputation advances under a white flag to demonstrate human intelligence and attempt communication. After green smoke and a humming noise, an unseen beam burns the men and sweeps across the surrounding trees and buildings. The narrator initially struggles to understand that he is watching people die, and survives because the beam does not complete its circle. His shock gives way to a panic that makes him run away weeping.

6. Chapter 6: The Heat-Ray in the Chobham Road

   The narrator offers a possible explanation of the Heat-Ray while admitting that its precise workings remain unproved. Its power to ignite materials and melt metal establishes the force behind the nearly forty deaths around the pit. He reconstructs the roadside crowd's experience and imagines young people using the spectacle as a chance to stroll and flirt. Stent and Ogilvy had requested soldiers to protect the Martians, showing how differently they understood the likely direction of violence. A mound shields the roadside crowd from the beam, but burning trees and damaged buildings provoke panic. The rush into a narrow road becomes another source of deadly harm as people are crushed and trampled.

7. Chapter 7: How I Reached Home

   After collapsing beside the road, the narrator abruptly recovers his everyday sense of himself and finds the attack almost impossible to believe. Familiar trains, lights and neighbours clash with the violence he has just witnessed. The people at a gate laugh when he mentions the Martians and again when he struggles to describe what he has seen. At home his wife believes him, and her fear leads him to offer reassurance based on the creatures' slow movements and Earth's stronger gravity. Looking back, he explains that this argument ignored both the atmosphere's effects and the Martians' ability to use machinery. Food, wine and domestic comfort restore his confidence, while his comparison with a dodo exposes how little that confidence proves.

8. Chapter 8: Friday Night

   The narrator widens his account from his own household to the district and London, where most routines remain undisturbed. Henderson's newspaper dismisses his telegram as a false report and decides against a special edition when he cannot confirm it because he has been killed. Trains continue running, and passengers interpret distant signs of destruction as a heath fire. Nearer the pit, houses burn, bodies remain on the common and some people who approach the Martians never return. The image of Earth pierced by a poisoned dart presents violence as a local wound whose effects are not yet widely felt. While the Martians work on machines, soldiers establish a cordon and further forces set out from Aldershot. The fall of a second cylinder closes the account of the night with another arrival.

9. Chapter 9: The Fighting Begins

   Saturday begins with familiar deliveries, gardening and confidence that the troops can contain the Martians. Soldiers question the narrator about creatures they have not seen, while newspapers offer little reliable information. Military preparations revive his boyhood dreams of battle, and he imagines the invaders helpless in their pit. That confidence collapses when firing is followed by the destruction of nearby buildings and damage to his chimney. He hires the Spotted Dog landlord's horse and cart, promising to return them by midnight, and gathers his wife, servant and valuables. His admission that the landlord's safety seemed less urgent than his own exposes the limits of his concern for others under pressure.

10. Chapter 10: In the Storm

    The journey to Leatherhead passes through peaceful countryside, but the narrator's wife remains fearful. His promise to return the cart gives him a reason to leave, while his desire to witness the invaders' defeat makes him welcome the journey. Near midnight a third falling star appears and a violent thunderstorm breaks over the road. Lightning reveals a huge tripod in fragments before a second machine approaches and he overturns the cart while trying to turn away. The horse dies, and the shocked narrator crawls through cover before making his way home rather than returning to his wife. Finding the landlord dead replaces the ordinary transaction over the cart with a direct encounter with death.

11. Chapter 11: At the Window

    After changing his wet clothes, the narrator watches fires, a wrecked train and huge moving shapes from his study. The destruction of his familiar surroundings makes him question the relationship between the machines and the Martians he first saw. Imagining how human machinery might appear to another animal begins to reverse his usual sense of human superiority. An artilleryman enters the garden, and the narrator brings him inside, where the soldier breaks down before giving a fragmented account of the fighting. His story describes military defeat, the burning of Woking and a machine's brutal attack on a fleeing man. Telling his story calms him, and the two men share food without lighting a lamp for fear of attracting attention. Dawn reveals the widespread destruction more clearly than the night's flames had done.

12. Chapter 12: What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton

    Determined to reach his wife and take her abroad, the narrator accepts the artilleryman's advice to carry food and avoid the direct route to Leatherhead. Their journey brings them past military preparations and civilians whose attachment to possessions delays their escape. At Weybridge and the river crossing, confusion grows while many people still assume the army will defeat the invaders. When five machines approach, the narrator enters the river to escape the Heat-Ray. Shellfire kills the Martian inside one hood, but its machine continues moving without guidance before smashing down the tower of Shepperton Church and falling into the water. His excitement briefly overrides his sense of danger as the wreck heats the river, and the remaining machines' Heat-Rays make the water still hotter. He reaches the shore helpless and survives as the four machines carry away their companion's wreckage.

13. Chapter 13: How I Fell in with the Curate

    The narrator's wider account describes the Martians regrouping and the authorities preparing guns and signals around the approaches to London. His own escape is painfully slow as he paddles an abandoned boat downstream without oars. Fever and faintness eventually force him ashore, where he suffers from thirst and feels an anger towards his wife that he cannot explain. A curate nearby repeatedly asks why the disaster has been permitted and turns to biblical images of destruction. The narrator answers his despair with practical questions and the evidence that a Martian has been killed. Their exchange challenges the assumption that religious work should protect a community from suffering, while the narrator interprets a heliograph's flicker as evidence of continuing human effort. Distant firing interrupts them before he proposes a route northward.

14. Chapter 14: In London

    The account shifts to the narrator's younger brother, a medical student in London who initially hopes to visit Woking and see the Martians before they are killed. Newspaper reports misrepresent their weapons and movements, while broken railway and telegraph connections leave him unable to discover what has happened to the narrator. Sunday routines continue around him, showing how little alarming news has disturbed the city's confidence in its own safety. Refugees and a fresh report of the fighting gradually make the scale of the danger clearer, though official assurances still stress military strength and the invaders' small numbers. Before dawn on Monday, police knock at doors and bells ring as news arrives that the defences have failed. An official dispatch declares that only immediate flight offers safety from the poisonous Black Smoke, and the brother gathers his money to leave. A newspaper seller charging a shilling while running with the crowd shows trade continuing within the panic.

15. Chapter 15: What Had Happened in Surrey

    The narrator reconstructs the renewed offensive from other accounts alongside his own experience with the curate. Gunners at St George's Hill apparently damage a tripod's leg, but its companions destroy the battery and the damaged machine is repaired. The Martians then spread out with tubes that fire canisters towards possible hiding places for human guns. Although he leads the curate into a ditch for safety, excitement draws the narrator up into the hedge, where he cannot explain the Martians' shots or the silence of the human guns. His later explanation identifies a lethal, heavy vapour that flows into low ground, while admitting that its substance remains largely unknown. From a deserted house at Upper Halliford, the two men see the Martians use steam to clear the vapour, and the narrator describes the systematic defeat of the defences. The closing account explicitly imagines the fate of batteries with no survivors, marking the limits of eyewitness evidence before describing the government's warning to London.

16. Chapter 16: The Exodus from London

    The mass flight overwhelms police and railway organisation, and people turn violently on one another while trying to escape. After failing to board a train, the narrator's brother joins the looting of a cycle shop and rides out of London before the damaged wheel breaks near Edgware. Continuing on foot, he fights men attacking two women in a pony-chaise, and Miss Elphinstone returns with a revolver to help him escape his pursuers. He joins her and her sister-in-law, Mrs Elphinstone, and proposes travelling across Essex towards Harwich because the trains offer little hope. Near Barnet they encounter a crowded road where differences of dress and occupation coexist with shared fear, thirst and exhaustion. His attempts to help others interrupt his own flight, but he cannot save a man trampled while collecting spilled gold. With Miss Elphinstone's help he gets the chaise into the traffic and eventually eastward, though their halt near East Barnet brings hunger, sleeplessness and the unsettling sight of people fleeing in the opposite direction.

17. Chapter 17: The Thunder Child

    The narrator widens the view of London's flight before returning to his brother's journey through a countryside running short of food. The Martians destroy transport, communications and weapons, apparently seeking to break resistance rather than kill everyone immediately. At Chelmsford a local supply committee seizes the party's pony for food, and the three continue towards the crowded coast. Despite Mrs Elphinstone's fear of leaving England, they board a steamer where passage and food are expensive. The Thunder Child charges three approaching Martian machines and brings down two, its burning wreckage crushing the second while the refugees cheer and escape. Smoke conceals the remaining combat, and a later glimpse of a broad flying shape leaves the passengers with another unexplained sight.

18. Chapter 1: Under Foot

    The narrative returns to the narrator and curate, confined at Halliford while the Black Smoke prevents escape. Anxiety about his wife makes the narrator restless, and the curate's despair drives him to seek solitude. Once a Martian clears the smoke with steam, they leave and pass through areas of destruction beside places that remain green or inhabited. Near Kew the narrator sees people being picked up rather than burned, forcing him to consider a purpose beyond killing. They find food in a house at Sheen, but the fifth cylinder's impact ruins their shelter and leaves them trapped beside it. The curate tends the injured narrator, and dawn gradually supplies enough evidence for the narrator to understand what has happened.

19. Chapter 2: What We Saw from the Ruined House

    A view through the broken wall reveals that the kitchen and scullery have survived by chance at the edge of the Martian pit. The narrator first mistakes a handling-machine for a living creature because its movements are so flexible and coordinated. His account of the Martians' anatomy draws on both observation and knowledge gained afterwards, including their feeding by injections of living blood. He compares that feeding with human meat-eating, challenging the assumption that human disgust proves human innocence. Descriptions of red Martian plants and machines worn like bodies extend the account of an unfamiliar form of life, while his belief in Martian telepathy remains an interpretation of their silent cooperation. The curate interrupts his watching to claim the narrow slit, and the chapter returns from extended explanation to the machinery working outside their shelter.

20. Chapter 3: The Days of Imprisonment

    Danger and isolation turn the two men's differences into physical struggles over food and the viewing slit. The narrator describes the curate with contempt but also admits using threats and blows, asking readers to judge his brutality in the light of extreme suffering. Outside, the handling-machines produce aluminium from clay, their dexterity making their living operators appear almost lifeless by comparison. A well-dressed captive is lifted from a fighting-machine's cage and disappears behind a mound before shrieking and Martian hooting begin. The narrator later witnesses the Martians feeding on a boy and tries to tunnel out, but falling earth forces him to stop. He considers waiting for the pit to be abandoned his best chance, while sounds like distant gunfire interrupt a quiet night without revealing their source.

21. Chapter 4: The Death of the Curate

    A struggle over wine leads the narrator to divide the remaining food into rations and guard it against the curate. Their conflict grows more violent, while the narrator recognises his companion's loss of reason and admits uncertainty about his own mental state. The curate condemns his failure to speak against poverty and oppression, then raises his voice despite the danger of being heard. When he moves into the kitchen proclaiming his duty to bear witness, the narrator strikes him with the blunt end of a meat chopper. A handling-machine's tentacle reaches through the gap and drags the motionless curate towards it, while the narrator fears the mark of his blow will reveal that someone else is present. Hidden among coal and firewood, he prays and bites his hand to prevent a scream when the searching tentacle touches his boot.

22. Chapter 5: The Stillness

    The empty pantry leaves the narrator without food and brings him to despair. Thirst eventually makes him risk using the noisy pump, and the absence of a searching tentacle provides a first sign that conditions outside may have changed. Hunger and thoughts of the curate's death disturb his sleep, while red weed growing across the opening colours the shelter's light like blood. When a dog appears, he considers killing it both for food and to prevent it attracting Martians, showing how survival has narrowed his choices. Continued silence finally encourages him to look out and discover an abandoned pit containing powder, aluminium bars and the skeletons of victims. He climbs into a ruined Sheen where red plants occupy the houses and ground, and the pleasure of fresh air offers relief without any visible human company.

23. Chapter 6: The Work of Fifteen Days

    Emerging from the pit, the narrator finds his familiar surroundings so changed that they resemble another planet. Comparing himself to a rabbit displaced by building work, he recognises the insecurity of animals under human rule. Hunger soon takes priority over reflection, and he struggles through gardens and floodwater to find scraps of food. He explains that red weed has choked the rivers and caused flooding, then describes its later destruction by a disease believed to be bacterial. This account places a limit on the invasive plant's apparent power without restoring human control over the landscape. Near Putney, untouched houses stand beside ruins while skeletons and silence lead him to fear that he is one of the last survivors.

24. Chapter 7: The Man on Putney Hill

    Food and a bed restore the narrator's ability to think clearly, bringing the curate's killing and his wife's fate back into focus. He denies remorse for the killing, presents the blow as the result of circumstances and asks readers to judge his account. Fear of what his wife may have suffered leads him to pray that she has died painlessly, while his own vulnerability prompts pity for animals ruled by humans. He then meets the artilleryman, who predicts that the Martians will breed captive people for food and proposes an independent society beneath London. The scheme aims to preserve scientific knowledge and eventually capture Martian machines, but it also demands obedience and the exclusion and death of those he considers weak or useless. The narrator initially accepts the soldier's authority, then questions his small tunnel, poor planning and readiness to replace work with food, drink and games. After joining in these distractions, the narrator feels ashamed of neglecting his wife and fellow humans and decides to seek information in London.

25. Chapter 8: Dead London

    Deserted streets, dead bodies and abandoned valuables make London a place where ordinary measures of wealth and security have lost their force. A repeated Martian cry draws the narrator northward and seems to give the empty city a voice. When it stops, the silence terrifies him even more, and he flees into hiding until his courage returns before dawn. His desperate decision to approach a machine on Primrose Hill and die changes to exultation when birds feeding on its occupant reveal that the Martian is dead. He finds the great camp full of dead invaders, and his retrospective explanation attributes their defeat to bacteria rather than human weapons. At the moment of discovery, however, he does not understand the cause and briefly interprets the deaths as divine intervention. Looking across London, he imagines people returning and rebuilding, but the thought of his own lost domestic happiness interrupts his gratitude.

26. Chapter 9: Wreckage

    The narrator's clear memory breaks off after the discovery on Primrose Hill, and he reconstructs the next three days from what others later tell him. News of the Martian defeat travels by telegraph and cyclists, bringing celebrations, returning trains and food from overseas. Strangers find him wandering in distress and shelter him despite their own difficulties, showing care surviving the collapse of ordinary life. Their report of Leatherhead's destruction deepens his belief that his wife is dead, but he eventually leaves them to revisit his home. Returning crowds, free trains and improvised railway repairs show recovery taking place amid visible hardship and wreckage. At home he finds the abandoned paper in which he had begun predicting the future development of morality, an awkward reminder of his former confidence in civilisation. His desolation is interrupted when his wife and cousin appear outside, and he catches her in his arms.

27. Chapter 10: The Epilogue

    The narrator acknowledges his limited scientific knowledge and qualifies the bacterial explanation he has used as probable rather than proved. Unsolved questions about the Black Smoke and Heat-Ray further limit humanity's understanding of Martian power. He urges a watch on Mars and preparations to destroy another cylinder before its occupants can attack. Reports suggesting a Martian landing on Venus lead him to consider humanity's own possible movement beyond Earth, but he also fears that the invaders may yet inherit the future. He sees possible benefits in new scientific knowledge, greater concern for humanity's common welfare and the loss of complacency about Earth's safety. These broad reflections give way to intrusive memories and nightmares that make recovered streets and crowds seem unreal. The final thought of holding his wife's hand joins their reunion to the knowledge that each had believed the other dead.

Key quotes