[Scheduled/Evergreen] The War of the Worlds (chapters 10-15 of book 1)

By bisonsun

Hi everyone, welcome to the second half of the discussion for The War of the Worlds. We’re on chapters 10-15 of book 1 today, and I added a chapter recap in case anyone wanted a quick refresher. Chapter 10, In the Storm: the narrator has made it to Leatherhead, and the fire has already stopped by then. He gets there safely, and he’s pretty eager to be around when the Martians get wiped out. He leaves his wife where he thinks she’ll be safe and heads back to return the horse to the innkeeper. On the way back he sees the third falling star come down during a thunderstorm, and then the Thing appears, this huge tripod thing taller than the trees. Another one shows up too. In his panic he tips over the dogcart and the horse dies with a broken neck. He crouches down while the Things go past. After that he heads toward home and finds the landlord’s dead body. Chapter 11, At the Window: back home, he notices the view from his study has already changed and there are giant black shapes moving overhead while the countryside burns underneath them. As he’s watching, an artillery driver shows up looking for somewhere safe and bringing news. The news is basically that things are not going well for the humans. Chapter 12, What I Saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton: they decide the house isn’t safe anymore. At first the narrator wants to go get his wife and take her farther away from the destruction, but the artillery driver talks him into coming with him instead and not making his wife a widow. They run into soldiers who haven’t seen the Martians yet and don’t really believe what they’re being told. They have a hard time finding the military headquarters. There are people hiding, people leaving town, and more soldiers coming in to fight. A lot of the people heading out still think the Martians will end up losing. By the Thames, the fighting starts and they hear the first shots. Then the Martians arrive and everyone panics, crashing into each other while trying to run. The narrator thinks to hide from the heat ray in the water, and some others do the same. When he comes up for air, he sees one of the Things get decapitated, which is at least a win for the humans for a second, even though everything after that gets worse fast. Four more come after it in revenge, and one of them carries him away right past the narrator, who is lying on the gravel burned from the boiling water but still somehow alive. Chapter 13, How I Fell in with the Curate: the military is starting to understand how serious the Martians are, and they’re moving guns around and switching to defense. Meanwhile the Martians are collecting the new arrivals and taking them to headquarters. While all that’s going on, the narrator finds an abandoned boat and keeps going down the river, constantly looking behind him. He’s exhausted, burned, and thirsty, and eventually he ends up on the banks of Middlesex and falls asleep. When he wakes up, he’s with a curate who’s been drifting in and out of consciousness and asking for water. The curate keeps asking what sins people must have committed to deserve this and thinks it’s the end of everything. The narrator tries to calm him down and tells him to get himself together. Chapter 14, In London: here we find out the narrator’s younger brother was in London as a medical student when the Martians came. He thinks he’s probably fine since the Thing is still a couple miles away from his house, and he wants to go see the Things before they’re destroyed, but the trains aren’t running. The narrator goes into how slowly London really understood what was happening. At first people don’t fully get it, and it mostly shows up in broken communications and trains stopping. A crowd gathers at the station until police break it up. Once the news really hits, it takes over the newspapers, and the brother starts worrying about his own safety. Then in the middle of the night London gets woken up by door knockers warning about the aliens. Black smoke is seen, the papers say the aliens are using rockets that give off black poisonous vapors, and everyone is trying to get out. Chapter 15, What Had Happened in Surrey: we get more about what the Martians are doing, and also that some of the “military” setups are really just volunteers who don’t stand much of a chance against the invaders. At St. George’s Hill, the gunners seem like they might do better at first, but once they actually start getting somewhere on one of the Martians, it sounds an alarm to call the others in. Most of the gunners are taken out by the heat ray. After that the Martians stay grouped together until the others arrive with black canisters. Later, the narrator and the curate see them again while hiding in brambles in a ditch by the road. The Martians fire something into the sky, and neither of them understands it. The narrator is frustrated that the human gunners don’t shoot at the Martian as it walks off. The things they launched later turn out to be a heavy black vapor that spreads over the area. Some time after that, the 4th cylinder lands on Earth. The Martians seem to have learned from what happened at St. George’s Hill and start using the vapor on the gunners before they can even get close. The human defense just falls apart into fear and mess. Feel free to jump in on any of the questions below, skip them, answer all of them, or add your own thoughts and questions too.