The War of the Worlds II Summary

Summary

After eating, the Narrator wakes in the scullery to find himself alone with the Curate; they creep to the kitchen door and discover a vertical slit where plaster has fallen away, giving them a view of the scene outside. Daylight reveals that the fifth cylinder has smashed into the neighbouring house, leaving a vast circular pit with the cylinder open in the centre and earth heaped round it; one of the fighting-machines stands abandoned at the pit's edge. A bright green vapour intermittently veils their view while a rhythmic thudding continues close at hand.

At first the Narrator's attention fixes on a sophisticated handling-machine—an articulated, crablike metallic contrivance—busy extracting rods and plates from the cylinder and depositing them on a level patch of earth. Only after watching the device does he focus on the Martians themselves: grotesque, head-like bodies about four feet across, with large dark eyes, a fleshy beak, an ear-drum at the back, and two bunches of eight whip-like tentacles (the "hands") around the mouth. Their physiology is described—brain-dominated bodies, bulky lungs, convulsive outer skins—along with their feeding habit of injecting living blood. The Narrator notes their lack of digestion, absence of sex, seeming immunity to disease, and their probable telepathic interchange of thought. He also observes the rapid spread of the red weed and the Martians' striking mechanical and anatomical differences from humans; meanwhile the handling-machine assembles parts into a structure like itself while a smaller digging machine continues the rhythmic excavation without an apparent operator.

Key events

1. Narrator wakes in scullery and finds the Curate across the room.
2. A chunk of plaster falls, revealing a vertical slit to the street and pit.
3. They see the fifth cylinder smashed into a house, lying in a deep pit.
4. A handling-machine unpacks and assembles apparatus from the cylinder.
5. Several Martians lie and struggle near the pit; green vapour and red weed appear.
6. Narrator describes Martian anatomy, habits, and mechanical technology.
7. A digging mechanism produces the rhythmic beating that shakes their refuge.

Analysis

This chapter shifts the narrative from immediate panic to prolonged, attentive observation, allowing Wells to present scientific and anthropological details that deepen the novel's speculative realism. Structurally, it functions as an extended field-note: the Narrator pauses action to catalog the Martians and their devices, which both demystifies the invaders and increases the reader's sense of horror through clinical description. The juxtaposition of the mechanical (handling-machines) and the biological (the Martian 'heads') reinforces central themes: the replacement of human embodied life by pure intellect and tool-use, and the unsettling convergence of machine and organism. Symbolically, the opened cylinder and the pit dramatize irreversible intrusion and the collapse of familiar domestic space; the green vapour and red weed suggest contamination and ecological displacement. Wells's narrative technique blends vivid sensory detail with quasi-scientific exposition and occasional authorial judgement (e.g., comparing artists' depictions to reality), creating credibility while maintaining moral distance. The narrator's careful, sometimes almost clinical tone enhances the uncanny: the Martians' lack of digestion, sexlessness, and possible telepathy mark them as not merely alien but evolutionary negations of human traits, foreshadowing later ethical and existential stakes. Finally, the chapter underlines human helplessness—the machines and creatures act methodically and without audible communication—while foregrounding curiosity as a survival impulse that risks exposing observers to danger.

Important quotes

“The cylinder lay now far beneath the original foundations—deep in a hole, already vastly larger than the pit I had looked into at Woking.”

NarratorDescribes the scale of destruction after the fifth cylinder falls into a house, forming a deep pit.

“They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to conceive.”

NarratorThe moment the Narrator first clearly observes the Martians' grotesque, head-like bodies and tentacles.

“It seemed infinitely more alive than the actual Martians lying beyond it in the sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual tentacles, and moving feebly after their vast journey across space.”

NarratorCompares the vivid, animate quality of the handling-machine to the feeble physical state of the Martians.

Characters in II

• The Narrator
• The Curate
• The Martians
• Professor Howes
• Philips