Draft:The Narrator (The War of the Worlds)
 | Draft article not currently submitted for review.
This is a draft Articles for creation (AfC) submission. It is not currently pending review. While there are no deadlines, abandoned drafts may be deleted after six months. To edit or make changes to this draft, simply click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window. To be accepted, a draft should:
It is strongly discouraged to write about either yourself or your business or employer. If you do so, you must declare it. Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
Last edited by LeGoldenBoots (talk | contribs) 2 days ago. (Update) |
| Narrator | |
|---|---|
| The War of the Worlds character | |
 The narrator, as illustrated by Warwick Goble | |
| First appearance | The War of the Worlds |
| Created by | H. G. Wells |
| In-universe information | |
| Alias | The Journalist (Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds) Walter Jenkins (The Massacre of Mankind) |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Family | The narrator's wife The narrator's cousin |
| Nationality | British |
The narrator is the unnamed protagonist of the 1898 science fiction novel The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. He is said to be a writer of "professed and recognized writer on philosophical themes," and finds himself in the midst of the Martian invasion due to living near Horsell Common, where the first Martian cylinder lands.
There have been various academic interpretations of the character; Wells scholar Patrick Parrinder considers the narrator a foil to the Victorian hero,[1] a trope popular at the time of the novel's release. Critics like John Reider and Robert Crossley have frequently interpreted the narrator as a way to push an anti-imperialist interpretation.[2][3]
Biography
[edit]The narrator describes himself as "professed and recognized writer on philosophical themes." He lives in Surrey, England, near Horsell Common, where the first cylinder lands. After the Martians come out and prove to be hostile, he runs in the streets and flees with his wife to Leatherhead, asking his landlord to borrow a dogcart and a horse to carry supplies. When he reaches Leatherhead the next morning, he decides to return the dogcart back to Surrey, to the landlord, leaving his wife with his cousin. In night, while he is walking, he encounters a fighting machine, which kills the horse. He leaves the dogcart behind, fleeing for his house. He meets the artilleryman for the first time at his home, but after they go out the next morning and wander, they are separated by a Martian attack.
After a tumultuous affair at River Wey, he meets with a curate in Walton. The two take shelter in an abandoned house in the countryside, eventually becoming trapped together after a cylinder lands near the house, surrounding them with Martians. After two weeks of rationing with the food in the house, the curate, emotional and panicking, reveals their position to the Martians. However, the narrator is able to leave, alive, after the curate is captured and killed by a handling machine. The next morning, the narrator wanders the countryside of England. He rummages through abandoned houses, looking for food, all the while emotional and concerned about his wife.
After he finds himself back in Woking, he reconciles with the artilleryman. The artilleryman boasts about his plan to create an underground society against the Martians, and the rest of the day the two men work on the tunnel system. However, it is while they are on their break and playing cards, that the narrator remembers his wife and how much of a fool he has made of himself. After the artilleryman gets distracted, the narrator ventures into the town.
However, the narrator, intending to sacrifice himself to the Martians, hears a repeating call. He turns into a field, thinking that a handling machine is there, but instead finds the Martians dying. He raises his hands up into the air, relieved. Later, when society is rebuilding, he reunites with his wife.
Interpretations
[edit]As a universal symbol of the English everyman
[edit]And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
Critics have frequently interpreted the narrator's lack of name as a way for readers to transpose themselves onto him.
In his 2008 monograph Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, John Reider states that The War of the Worlds is "the experience of colonial subjugation brought home to the metropolitian readers," arguing that because the narrator is inherently void of any significant character traits, that he can be likened to the average middle class man in England. He states that the narrator's occupation as a philosophical thinker is used as a vehicle in the book that "inverts the structure of imperial ideology."[2]
Robert Crossley stated in his book, Imagining Mars: A Literary History, that "Wells asks the English to imagine themselves as the victims of empire." [sic] [3]
As a psychological case study
[edit]It is a curious thing that I felt angry with my wife; I cannot account for it, but my impotent desire to reach Leatherhead worried me excessively.
Wells scholar Patrick Parrinder suggests that the book is "a confessional text written by a traumatised survivor who remains understandably demoralised and disoriented by his experiences."[4]
Yoonjoung Choi and Richard Law discuss how the narrative is from two different perspectives; one of a rational philosopher writing from the future, and the other of an irrational man trying to survive. They suggest that these two perspectives are in constant clash with each other. After the curate dies, the narrator confesses that the death "gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to recall; I saw it simply as a thing done, a memory infinitely disagreeable but quite without the quality of remorse." Despite the fact that the narrator was safer with his wife in Leatherhead, he decides to charge back into the heat of the war. At the end of the book, finding his new reality hopeless, he charges head first into what he thinks are the Martians. His "war-fever" and desire to check out the Martians overrides the desire to find his wife to the point of self-destruction; making the text, as Choi writes, "the narrator's attempt at self justification. . .construed as the confession of his ambiguous morality."[5][4]
Adaptations and unofficial sequels
[edit]The narrator is not typically adapted in adaptations of The War of the Worlds, however there are a few minor exceptions.
Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds
[edit]In Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, the narrator is renamed to The Journalist. He is a combination of the narrator as well as the narrator's brother; for he is there to witness the destruction of Thunder Child.
The Massacre of Mankind
[edit]Pendragon Pictures film
[edit]The Asylum film
[edit]Reception
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Patrick Parrinder. Learning from Other Worlds. ISBN 9780853235743.
- ^ a b Rieder, John (2008). Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 9780819568748.
- ^ a b Crossley, Robert (2011). Imagining Mars: A Literary History. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 9780819569271.
- ^ a b Parrinder, Patrick (1999). "How Far Can We Trust the Narrator of The War of the Worlds?". Foundation. 28 (77): 15–24.
- ^ Choi, Yoonjoung (2007-10-17). Real romance came out of dreamland into life H. G. Wells as a romancer (PDF) (PhD thesis). Durham University. Retrieved 2026-05-24.