War of the Worlds: Superiority Flashcards
the sword of the gods
Chapter 5 - The Heat Ray
‘Sweeping around swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this invisible, inevitable sword of heat’
- SPEED, TECHNOLOGY, MARTIAN POWER
- CONT: Predicted lasers
- ‘slow and steady’ contrast to human slow and steady ‘swiftly and steadily’ - showing Martians are better and more advanced
- ‘Invisible, Inevitable sword of heat’ - almost god-like, unnatural, out of this world
- ‘sword’ - medieval, no words to describe it
Narrator
colonisation parallel
Chapter 12 - The Artilleryman
‘Its bows and arrows against the lightning’
- MARTIAN POWER
- CONT: IMPERIALISM - how the natives felt
- ‘bows and arrows’ - primitive contrasted to ‘lightning’ - out of this world godly
- paralell to colonisation
Artilleryman
tricolon of speed
Chapter 11 - Artilleryman
‘Just like the parade it had been a minute before - then stumble,bang,swish!
- SPEED, ONOMATOPOEIA
- CONT: VICTORIAN ARROGANCE
- ‘parade’ - symbol of Victorian power, disintegrated in ‘a minute’
- shows the speed of the attack
- tricolon of ‘stumble, bang,swish’ emphasises rapidity and loud noise
Artilleryman
slain by the midgest
Book 2 Chapter 3
‘slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria…slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon the earth
- HUMAN + MARTIAN SMALLNESS, SMALL MOTIF
- CONT: DARWINISM REJECTION
- ‘man’s devices had failed’ - human arrogance is gone
- ‘God’ - reference to higher in contrast of beliefs of the times
- ‘slain’ - heroic, old, verb - repeated
empasihes the unlikeliness of the bacteria slaying
- ‘bacteria’ - smallest thing defeats the largest reversal of the whole book
Narrator looking at slain martians in London
man vs antz
Book 2 - rants about his planned society
‘It never was a war, any more than there’s a war between man and ants’
-MOTIF OF SMALL + INSIGNIFICANT, POWER OF MARTIANS, LNK TO END OF THE BOOK (bacteria win)
-‘man and ants’ - juxtaposition of size to show incredulity of war
‘ants’ - belittles humans
LNK - Infusoria under a microscope
Artilleryman
titanic type shi
Book 2 Chapter 6
‘Its swiftly growing and Titanic water fronds speedily choked both those rivers’
- HUMAN VALUE, MARTIAN STRENGTH
- ‘choked’ - human like verb, personifies the red weed of the martians (theyre plants are same levels as humans)
- ‘swiftly’ and ‘speedily’ - clear emphasis on the speed of the growth, showing Martians plants grow better (as they are better)
Narrator on the way to London
ghosts from village
book 1 chapter 15
‘the strangeness of its coiling flow and how he looked down from the church spire and saw the houses of the village rising like ghosts out of it’s inky nothingness’
- GOTHiC, MARTIAN POWER
- CONT: GOTHIC
- ‘strangeness of its’ - narrator is a learned human man who is baffled by the gas, showing the Martian advancement
- ‘rising like ghosts out of its inky nothingness’ - percursor to SciFi was gothic
- ‘coiling flow’ - trying to relate to something the humans understand like a snake
narrator
fiery chaos of narrators home
Book 1 Chapter 11
‘ this was the little world in which I had been living securely for years, this fiery chaos!’…In the last 7 hours
- LIGHT, HUMAN INSIGNIFICANCE, SPEED
- contrast between ‘7 hours’ and ‘years’ shows how strong the martians are compared to the humans, and how rapidly they collapsed
When the narrator is back at his house
things under a microthing
Chapter 1 Book 1
‘infusoria under a microscope’
- SIZE, MARTIAN POWER
- parralel to humans looking at germs, except humans are the germs
- point above dehumanises humans and personifies martians
- shows inklings of martians clinical nature as they are compared to scientists
- ‘under’ - further emphasises humans place
Chapter 1 intro
poison cloud
Book 1 Chapter 17
‘ the glittering martians went to and fro, calmly and methodically spreading their poison cloud’
- ‘to and fro’ - LNK to start of book about humans going to and fro, martians and humans are not so different
- ‘calmly and methodically’ contrated to poison shows the clincal and unemotional nature of martians when dealing with death
dethroned
Book 2 Chapter 6
‘ a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel… the fear and empire of man had passed away’
- MARTIAN POWER
- ‘martian heel’ - like how a dog is on the heel of a human, dehumanising the humans
- ‘empire of man’ - LNK to empire over matter
- ‘dethronment’ - removal of a king for a new king, now a common subject shows that humans now understand their true value
narrator on the way to london
1/1
The martians nature presented at the beginning of the book
‘Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes’
- unsympathetic draws comparisions between martians interacting with humans, and humans with other and their own species
- intellects vast and cool presents the advanced and indifferent emotionless nature of the martians
1/11
A nature feature destroyed by martians
‘In one night the valley has become a valley of ashes’
- *valley *has connotations of greenery and life
- *ashes *has conntotations of burning and death and finality which juxtaposes valley
- the time phrase emphasises the speed at which the martians were able to accomplish this
1/10
The first time a martian tripod is seen
‘A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal’
- the verb squashing has connotations of ease and casualness
- comparison of tripod to monster gives it ‘frightening’ quality
death man
bk 1 chPTER 5
‘I stood staring, not as yet realising that this was death leaping from man to man in that little distant crowd’
- death personified, no reaction from narrator, he is astounded
heat ray attack
