War of the Worlds: Destruction Flashcards
became not a man -> child
Chapter 5 - The Heat Ray
‘Such an extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping silently as a child might do’
- POWER OF MARTIANS, HUMAN NAIVEITY
- CONT: VICTORIAN GENDER ROLES
- simile ‘as a child ‘ - shows the fear presented
- ‘unmanning’ and ‘child’ - transported back in time, all experience and knowledge is gone
- same point accentuated by ‘might’ doesnt know anymore
Narrator
the sword of the gods
Chapter 5 - The Heat Ray
‘Sweeping around swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this invisible, inevitable sword of heat’
- SPEED, TECHNOLOGY, MARTIAN POWER
- CONT: Predicted lasers
- ‘slow and steady’ contrast to human slow and steady ‘swiftly and steadily’ - showing Martians are better and more advanced
- ‘Invisible, Inevitable sword of heat’ - almost god-like, unnatural, out of this world
- ‘sword’ - medieval, no words to describe it
Narrator
colonisation parallel
Chapter 12 - The Artilleryman
‘Its bows and arrows against the lightning’
- MARTIAN POWER
- CONT: IMPERIALISM - how the natives felt
- ‘bows and arrows’ - primitive contrasted to ‘lightning’ - out of this world godly
- paralell to colonisation
Artilleryman
slain by the midgest
Book 2 Chapter 3
‘slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria…slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon the earth
- HUMAN + MARTIAN SMALLNESS, SMALL MOTIF
- CONT: DARWINISM REJECTION
- ‘man’s devices had failed’ - human arrogance is gone
- ‘God’ - reference to higher in contrast of beliefs of the times
- ‘slain’ - heroic, old, verb - repeated
empasihes the unlikeliness of the bacteria slaying
- ‘bacteria’ - smallest thing defeats the largest reversal of the whole book
Narrator looking at slain martians in London
man vs antz
Book 2 - rants about his planned society
‘It never was a war, any more than there’s a war between man and ants’
-MOTIF OF SMALL + INSIGNIFICANT, POWER OF MARTIANS, LNK TO END OF THE BOOK (bacteria win)
-‘man and ants’ - juxtaposition of size to show incredulity of war
‘ants’ - belittles humans
LNK - Infusoria under a microscope
Artilleryman
railways go down
Fall of London
‘Even the railway organisations were losing coherency, losing shape and efficiency, guttering, softening running at last in that swift liquefaction of the social body’
- VICTORIAN SOCIETY, CHAOS
- CONT: railways are the peak of Victorian Society
- ‘even the railway organisations’ - ‘even’ shows the incredulity of the narrator as the railways are the peak of Victorian technology and they are breaking
- repetition of verbs emphasises the speed at which this occurs ‘losing’, ‘guttering’, ‘softening’, running’
Narrators Brother
fiery chaos of narrators home
Book 1 Chapter 11
‘ this was the little world in which I had been living securely for years, this fiery chaos!’…In the last 7 hours
- LIGHT, HUMAN INSIGNIFICANCE, SPEED
- contrast between ‘7 hours’ and ‘years’ shows how strong the martians are compared to the humans, and how rapidly they collapsed
When the narrator is back at his house
sapper arrogance
Book 1 Chapter 9
‘Talk about fishers of men - fighters of fish it is this time!/It ain’t no murder killing beasts like that ‘
- HUMAN ARROGANCE
- ‘beasts’ - refers to them as animals, trying to signify them as below humans and less reasonable
sappers talking
poison cloud
Book 1 Chapter 17
‘ the glittering martians went to and fro, calmly and methodically spreading their poison cloud’
- ‘to and fro’ - LNK to start of book about humans going to and fro, martians and humans are not so different
- ‘calmly and methodically’ contrated to poison shows the clincal and unemotional nature of martians when dealing with death
1/11
A nature feature destroyed by martians
‘In one night the valley has become a valley of ashes’
- *valley *has connotations of greenery and life
- *ashes *has conntotations of burning and death and finality which juxtaposes valley
- the time phrase emphasises the speed at which the martians were able to accomplish this
1/10
The first time a martian tripod is seen
‘A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal’
- the verb squashing has connotations of ease and casualness
- comparison of tripod to monster gives it ‘frightening’ quality
