The War Of The Worlds Analysis

Syntax H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds is a novel written in the first person perspective with quite a variety of sentence structures but is predominantly composed of compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences. One of the few straight to the point, simple sentences in the text is, “I felt foolish and angry (44).” This sentence quickly and concisely conveys the emotional state of the narrator at this point in the story.
Also contributing to the text are the long sentences that draw the breath out of you, such as, “Little did I know that night that our planet was being watched closely by beings with greater intelligence than man, beings who were just as mortal as man, beings who had created instruments and weapons man has scarcely
Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds is put together like a story. With the narrator recounting past events, it flows chronologically from when the Martians leave Mars to after they perish on Earth. This can be observed clearly by recalling a sentence from an earlier page and comparing it to that of one at the end. At the beginning of the novel with the Martians leaving Mars and heading for Earth it states,“Reports from the island of Java indicate the sighting of a mass of flaming hydrogen gas bursting out from the surface of Mars about midnight on the 12th. This flaming gas appeared to be moving with enormous speed towards Earth, but within fifteen minutes, it became invisible (7).” and “Yes the Things they were sending to us were flying swiftly and steadily across 40 million miles to bring death and destruction to Earth (10).” This gets the reader interested for the long haul. Wells captures the reader’s interest and then uses the second statement to most certainly foreshadow what is to come. After they perished the author wrote, “After the war, although the cause of the Martian’s deaths was discovered to be Earth’s bacteria, no one was able to determine what the Martians’ Black Smoke was made of, or how their Heat-Rays worked (237).” It can easily be understood that quite a bit of time has elapsed between these two points because this statement mentions a war, the Martians, their death, Black Smoke, and Heat-Rays. All of these were introduced throughout the course of
Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds is set in the late nineteenth century in Surrey, England. The first page states, “The little note in the London Daily Telegraph on the 13th of August, 1894, went almost unnoticed by most readers: Flaming Gas Bursts From Mars Reports from the island of Java indicate the sighting of a mass of flaming hydrogen gas bursting out from the surface of Mars about midnight on the 12th. This flaming gas appeared to be moving with enormous speed towards Earth, but within fifteen minutes, it became invisible (7).” This conveys to the reader exactly when the story is occurring, a general idea of where it is occurring, and draws attention to the imminent threat all in one page. Additionally, it tells the reader that no one expects what is to come. Later on in the text the exact location of where the events take place is described and a description of the antagonists is revealed. The author chose this location for a few reasons. First of all, he wanted to write something that people in his region would have a connection to. Secondly, he set the novel in Surrey, England so that any reader could imagine a small, rural community during the time period and visualize it being attacked by extraterrestrials. Lastly, Wells specifically chose to set the novel in England in order to turn the tables and put British people in the shoes of the Tasmanian natives that many British settlers