Theme Of Survival In H. G. Wells 'The War Of The Worlds'

H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds reigns title as a classic science fiction novel in English literature. The novel is separated into two books, with chapters sporadically switching between two point of views, the narrator and his brother, as they each recall their experience of the Martians’ surprise attack on Earth. The War of the Worlds was written in the late nineteenth century, when the concepts of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection and Herbert Spencer’s “survival of the fittest” were still hot topics. These ideas must have had a profound influence on Wells, as the theme of natural selection is present among the humans struggling to survive, and between Man and Martian.

Although the humans are ultimately fighting

The Martians are more evolved than the humans in almost every way—physically, mentally, technically—but in the end, it is the Martians who die. As Alfred Mac Adam states in The War of the Worlds notes, the Martians are more evolved because they are from the planet Mars—which is older than Earth—meaning that the Martians had more time than humans to evolve (204). Physically, the Martians are more advanced because they have no need to sleep or digest food (instead they inject the blood of their prey directly into their veins), and their brains and hands have evolved into a larger size (Wells 142). They are even more advanced mentally, since they can communicate telepathically and do not have emotions, which the narrator expounds, “In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men” (Wells 144). In addition, literary critic Kenneth Young explains how they have exceeded the humans’ technology with their Heat-Ray guns, spaceships, and fighting machines: “The Martian invaders fight ensconced in vast spiderlike engines a hundred feet high, mounted on a tripod and moving as fast as an express train. Their weapons include a poisonous black smoke with which they smother cities; their heat rays pulverize artillery and battleships” (234). Most importantly, the Martians are more advanced than the humans on an egotistical level—the narrator emphasizes how ignorant the humans were of the Martians’