The Martians in The War of the Worlds

Who is The Martians?

The Martians arrive in cylindrical projectiles that land on Horsell Common and other sites. They emerge as grey, leathery, multi-tentacled organisms who do not communicate with humans; instead they deploy advanced machines — tripods, handling-machines, and fighting-machines — and weapons (a lethal Heat-Ray and a black, suffocating vapour) to devastate the countryside, annihilate soldiers and civilians, and harvest people. They fashion and maintain mechanical devices around their cylinders, dig, assemble metal parts, and use carriers to collect victims. Their presence turns peaceful evenings, roads and towns into scenes of fire, steam, and red weed; they kill directly with beams and poisonous canisters and indirectly by creating panic that causes trampling and chaos. They appear industrious and remorseless, interested in securing territory and resources rather than negotiation, and they seem insensitive to earthly disease, thriving until putrefactive germs prove fatal. Throughout the narrative they function as the driving destructive force that precipitates the collapse of organized resistance and the human struggle for survival.

In the book: We first meet the Martians as the unsettling beings who tumble out of the fallen cylinders on Horsell Common—silent, alien, and immediately dangerous. Their strange movements and terrible heat-ray make it clear they aren’t visitors to chat; they’re the force that turns a quiet English evening into a nightmare.

Personality

Alien physiology

When the cylinder unscrews on Horsell Common, they roll out as grey, tentacled masses with luminous eyes and a V-shaped mouth, unlike any human form.

Technological supremacy

They deploy a Heat-Ray and three puffs of green smoke that incinerate people, trees, and buildings, annihilating a deputation that approaches the pit.

Methodical

In Sheen a handling-machine busily assembles aluminium bars from bluish dust while digging-machines excavate, showing organized industry around the cylinders.

Predatory

The narrator observes a man lifted in a cage on a fighting-machine and then vanished as the Martians shriek and hoot while feeding.

Biologically vulnerable

On Primrose Hill the Narrator finds the Martians dead and rotting, felled not by weapons but by earthly bacteria and putrefactive germs.

Character arc

The Martians appear abruptly and overwhelmingly powerful: their first emergence on Horsell Common immediately kills and terrifies civilians and military alike through the Heat-Ray and ensuing fires. In subsequent days they expand operations — deploying tripods and handling-machines, emitting black smoke canisters to clear gun positions, and forming great crescent lines that advance through the countryside and around London. Their tactics shift from immediate slaughter to consolidation: gathering prisoners with carriers, exploiting the red weed, and systematically disabling organised human resistance. Yet their dominance is ultimately undone not by human courage or technology but by an unforeseen biological weakness. While they adapt mechanically (repairing damaged machines, assembling parts) and use chemical means to suppress defenders, they never overcome terrestrial microbes; their bodies succumb and are found dead in and about their machines. Thus their arc runs from invincible conquerors to quietly mortified remnants, reversing the narrative’s direction from catastrophic defeat to sudden, improbable deliverance.

Relationships

• The Narrator Primary human witness and victim of their attacks who observes the Martians' machines, feeding, and eventual death.
• The Curate A fellow captive and observer who shares close confinement with the narrator while the Martians work nearby and deploy vapour.
• The Artilleryman A soldier who has encountered Martian machines in combat and theorizes about prolonged Martian occupation and human survival underground.
• Henderson One of the deputation that approaches the cylinder on Horsell Common and becomes a victim of the Martian Heat-Ray.
• Stent A local organizer on the common who helps restrain crowds and later falls victim when the Martians unleash their weapon.
• Ogilvy Member of the early deputation and onlookers who attempt to communicate but are destroyed by the Martian Heat-Ray.

Quotes by The Martians

““They wiped us out—simply wiped us out,” he repeated again and again.”

Chapter 11The artilleryman's repeated phrase conveys his shock and the utter, indiscriminate devastation wrought by the Martian attack.

““It’s no kindness to the right sort of wife,””

XIIHe dissuades the narrator from striking across country alone, arguing for a safer plan to protect a wife.

““Get under water!””

XIIShouted instinctively as the Heat-Ray strikes, this conveys the narrator’s quick decision to seek temporary refuge in the river.

“Have you any water?”

XIIIFirst thing the narrator asks the curate after waking, showing his physical desperation and need.

“What does it mean?”

XIIIThe curate's anguished, existential question that reveals his religious interpretation of the catastrophe.

“God have mercy upon us!”

I. UNDER FOOT.The Curate’s terrified response after they discover they are buried and in imminent danger.

Why The Martians matters

The Martians embody the novel’s challenge to complacent human supremacy: technologically superior, amoral, and indifferent to human life, they expose the fragility of armies, institutions, and daily routines. Their clinical, mechanical methods of conquest and their ultimate destruction by mundane bacteria highlight themes of cosmic perspective, the contingency of civilization, and the limits of human self-assurance. By acting as an external force that rearranges social order and reveals both cowardice and courage in people, the Martians provoke reflections on survival, adaptation, and the smallness of human control in a wider natural and cosmic environment.

Chapters with The Martians

• Chapter 4
• V. THE HEAT-RAY.
• VI. THE HEAT-RAY IN THE CHOBHAM ROAD.
• VIII. FRIDAY NIGHT.
• IX
• X
• Chapter 11
• XII
• XIII
• XIV
• XV
• XVI
• XVII
• I. UNDER FOOT.
• II
• III
• 4
• 5. THE STILLNESS
• Chapter 6
• VII. THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL.
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• 10. THE EPILOGUE.

More The War of the Worlds characters

• The NarratorNarrator
• The Narrator's WifeMajor character
• OgilvyMajor character
• The CurateMajor character
• The ArtillerymanMajor character
• HendersonMinor character
• StentMajor character
• The Narrator's BrotherMajor character