The War of the Worlds

The narrator’s brother is another intellectual who resembles the narrator in far more ways than they differ. Among his most obvious differences are that he is younger, he is unmarried, and he lives in London where he studies medicine. Less superficially, he is more decisive, braver, and more morally upright than the narrator. The last chapters of Book 1 are more or less narrated by the narrator’s brother (though they are reported by the normal narrator), this switch justified by the brother’s unique but inherently desirable perspective as a Londoner and the value of his chance viewing of a battle between the Martian fighting-machines and a British warship. Like his brother, he is never named, and, especially considering the reader learns nothing of him before or after his chapters, not even his fate after fleeing England, his role further suggests that The War of the Worlds is far more focused on the what than the who.

Given their personality differences, the narrator and his brother could be viewed as foils to each other, and the narrator’s brother’s story casts a more critical light on the narrator’s own morality. A trained boxer, the narrator’s brother never shirks away from dangerous situations the way the narrator does. Since he also spends less time intellectualizing ideas of morality than the narrator does, Wells may be using this character to suggest that moral codes are most reliable when they are intuitive and internal.

The curate is a member of the clergy in a church located in or near Weybridge. The narrator encounters him after both men escape the destruction there. From their first meeting, the curate is immobilized with terror of the Martians and confusion over how they fit into his understanding of Christianity. Unable to abandon him, the narrator travels with the curate until they reach the house in Sheen in which they become trapped by the crash landing of the fifth Martian cylinder. Even prior to this juncture, the curate’s state of mind spirals downward, but their confinement makes the situation much worse. By their ninth day in the ruined house, the curate has become so reckless, unpredictable, and vindictive that the narrator feels compelled to knock him unconscious to prevent alerting the Martians outside to their presence. Nevertheless, the Martians are alerted, and one makes off with the curate’s unconscious body.

If a human could be said to be the antagonist of The War of the Worlds, the curate would be the obvious candidate. His moral impotence and rash selfishness add enormously to the narrator’s struggles when they are together. The dire ends to which the narrator feels driven by the curate constitute the greatest moral dilemma of the novel. The tragedy of the total failure of the relationship between these two men demonstrates the devastatingly divisive impact calamity can have. Nameless like the narrator and his brother, the curate’s appellation clearly identifies him with organized religion, and so his failures can be read as a criticism of the Christian leadership of the Western World for neglecting to provide meaningful moral guidance to their followers amidst the catastrophes wrought by imperialism and industrialization.

The artilleryman is a young soldier whom the narrator encounters at two different points in the novel. So changed is he between these two encounters that he almost seems like two different characters. The narrator first meets him as he attempts to break into the narrator’s house. At this point the artilleryman, having just seen most of his company obliterated and only narrowly having survived himself, is struggling to manage his emotions. However, the narrator’s hospitality helps him get back on his feet, and the two men travel together the next morning until the artilleryman meets back up with another regiment in Weybridge.

Over two weeks later, the narrator happens upon the artilleryman once more, this time just outside of London on Putney Hill. As the military response to the Martians began to prove hopeless and regiments scattered, the artilleryman realized many provisions would be left behind and decided to stay and take advantage of them. He impresses the narrator with his astute yet cynical observations about the fate of humanity under the Martians and convinces the narrator to help him bring about his ambitious plan of building an underground society. However, the plan is troubling in its reliance on ideas of human hierarchies and violence, and the narrator soon discovers that the artilleryman lacks the work ethic to see it through.

Alongside the curate, the artilleryman demonstrates another unfortunate direction survivors can take when confronted with extreme tragedy, and, just as the curate reflects Wells’s ideas about organized religion, the artilleryman’s associations with the military indicate the author’s disappointment in the greed, ineptitude, and abusiveness of the armies of Britain and other Western nations.

The narrator’s wife is a minor character about whom very little is revealed. As the narrator brings home terrifying news of the Martians, she grows nervous but remains passive. After Maybury is attacked, she flees with the narrator to her cousin’s home in Leatherhead. The narrator leaves her to attempt to return the cart they rented for their escape, and she does not appear again until the end of the novel when she and the narrator reunite at their home.

Though she appears rarely in the novel, the desire to reunite with her drives much of the narrator’s actions, and the hope of finding her may account for some part of his ability to resist despair. By virtue of her small, passive role, she figures into Wells’s criticism of Victorian gender roles.

The Elphinstones are the two women whom the narrator’s brother rescues from robbery amidst the exodus from London. They are connected by George Elphinstone—Mrs. Elphinstone’s husband and Miss Elphinstone’s brother—a doctor who sent them on ahead of himself to flee but then failed to meet up with them at the appointed time and place. Consequently, Mrs. Elphinstone is a nervous wreck, incapacitated by her husband’s absence. Miss Elphinstone, however, soldiers on and is one of the novel’s bravest and most admirable characters. Through her courage, she returns to save the narrator’s brother from those same robbers and, once he begins traveling with them, acts as his partner and equal, the two of them wholly responsible for the trio’s successful flight to the sea.

Given the extreme differences between Mrs. and Miss Elphinstone, they present the clearest case for Wells’s criticism of Victorian gender roles. Whereas Mrs. Elphinstone and, to a lesser extent, the narrator’s wife are uselessly subservient to their husbands, Miss Elphinstone’s position outside of this marital tyranny allows her to demonstrate that women are more than capable and deserving of equality.