The Other and The Unknown Theme Analysis

With its lush descriptions of otherworldly creatures and unfathomable machines, The War of the Worlds underscores that all alien stories are, at their root, stories about discomfort with—and fear of—the unknown. Wells’s story falls under the broad category of “invasion literature,” a genre of fiction made famous by Colonel George Chesney’s “The Battle of Dorking” (1871) which details a hypothetical invasion of England by German forces. Englanders were perhaps especially anxious about the prospect of invasion, perhaps in part because a history of colonialism meant, among other things, that their country had always been the conqueror, never the conquered. As Brian Aldiss writes in his introduction to The War of the Worlds, Chesney’s use of “the device of future war and sudden invasion, which exposes the unprepared nation to inevitable defeat, aroused fears and imitations everywhere.” The War of the Worlds was one such imitation, but Wells’s choice to have the invaders hail from Mars took the genre one step further, emphasizing his countrymen’s hysterical fear of the foreigner—or the “other”—making their way into England. The Martians, for their part, embody the mysteriousness and inscrutability that characterize the other in the imaginations of the people. As such, these creatures are the ultimate manifestation of otherness. In turn, the public’s uncontrollable fear of the invaders mirrors the xenophobia that was rampant throughout England in the late 19th century. 

The narrator’s overwhelming fear of the Martians (and the mystery surrounding them) throws him into a state of confusion about even his own familiar surroundings. “The fear I felt was no rational fear,” he writes, “but a panic terror not only of the Martians but of the dusk and stillness all about me.” Suddenly, with the introduction of an unknown species, he sees his world anew. He finds himself disoriented by simple things like “the dusk and stillness” of the surrounding landscape. This is perhaps because he’s seeing the world through new eyes, imagining what earth must look like to these foreigners. It’s worth noting that he admits his fear is irrational, since it suggests that Wells understands that it’s necessary to levelheadedly come to terms with the presence of an outsider, even when doing so may bring on a state of “panic terror.” While the narrator’s countrymen respond to this terror by frantically and pointlessly firing guns at the enormous fighting machines, the narrator merely takes in the new landscape around him in an attempt to reconcile himself to the presence of the other.

The narrator’s willingness to step outside his limited viewpoint and reexamine his immediate reality shows that the Martians have a strong effect on human psychology. Their arrival prompts self-reflection and evaluation. For instance, their presence causes the narrator to observe the following about himself: “At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me.” Not only does the narrator find himself scrutinizing his surroundings (the “dusk and stillness”) with new eyes, but he also finds himself assessing the way he—as a human—processes the world, realizing that he often tends to detach himself from reality, as he tries to do in this moment while wandering home after witnessing the Martians’ first violent act. “I seem to watch it all from the outside,” he realizes, “out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.” That the narrator’s realization about himself is spurred by the Martian invasion suggests that the arrival of outsiders presents people with an opportunity for self-reflection and growth. Although the Martians are dangerous and pose a great challenge to humanity, their arrival causes the narrator to develop a greater understanding of himself and the world around him. Forced into a situation in which he can’t detach from “the stress and tragedy” around him, he instead reckons with his own emotional escapism. 

Although religion doesn’t play a major role in The War of the Worlds, it’s worth examining Wells’s treatment of religion in relation to the theme of the unknown in the novel. Unlike the narrator, the curate is unable to come to terms with the presence of the mysterious Martians because he has devoted his entire life to God, and the existence of aliens doesn’t fit into the religious framework through which he views the world. As a result, he feels pessimistic and defeated, simultaneously unwilling to renounce his religious views and unable to understand how his beliefs might account for this strange new reality. Simply put, the curate is no longer confident in his system of belief and is therefore suddenly thrust into a state of unknowing. At the same time, he also feels entitled to safety and justice as a reward for his past devotion. “Why are these things permitted?” he wails. “What sins have we done?” Later, he adds, “All the work—all the Sunday-schools—What have we done—What has Weybridge done?” By asking what he has “done,” he bitterly implies that he doesn’t deserve to experience the horror of the Martian invasion, but should be protected because of his piety. A man of philosophy and reason, the narrator finds this line of thinking pathetic, asking “What good is religion if it collapses under calamity?” In this moment, the narrator suggests that the ultimate end of religion is to comfort people in times of difficulty. However, the curate’s religious views don’t help him to cope with the Martian invasion—they only serve to prevent him from accepting the objective nature of his new reality. In this way, Wells calls attention to the psychological acrobatics humans put themselves through in order to avoid reconciling themselves to otherness and the threat of the unknown—a phenomenon Wells no doubt witnessed at the end of the 19th century as his fellow citizens fretted over the prospect of foreign invasion.