With the introduction of the Martian fighting-machines, the middle portion of Book 1 sees widespread human misery at the hands of the Martians progress from a likelihood to a certainty. The Martian attack on Maybury Hill in Chapter 9 immediately leads the narrator and his wife and his wife to flee, the horrors he witnesses upon returning to Maybury that night leave him “shivering violently” (55). Even his miraculous survival of the Martian onslaught in Weybridge and Shepperton leaves him floating helplessly down the Thames and wandering mindlessly, begging for water. However, the Martians’ immense power is not unlimited. For one, the narrator’s survival is guaranteed by virtue of his narration. Moreover, this section provides some reason to believe that all is not lost. This hope comes chiefly via the destruction of a fighting-machine at Shepperton—a sight the narrator greets with “a scream and a cheer” (70), his joy shared by all present.

The narrator believes that the Martians spare him only because they are caught off-guard: “After getting this sudden lesson in the power of terrestrial weapons, the Martians retreated […] and in their haste […] they no doubt overlooked many such a stray and negligible victim as myself” (74). The role the narrator’s insignificance plays in his survival foreshadows the ultimate defeat of the Martians by bacteria, the most negligible of “terrestrial weapons.” While the narrator certainly could not predict this connection, he holds on to this event to justify his optimism when countering the despair of the curate: “One of them was killed yonder not three hours ago. […] We have chanced to come in for the thick of it, […] and that is all” (78-79). The narrator’s assessment here proves to be accurate in the end, but not because of anything humanity itself does. Rather, the novel extends its argument about The Illusion of Power to the Martians when it depicts them as quickly overwhelmed by an apparently trivial force.  

The curate is one of the most important characters in the novel, as is the artilleryman. Each man provides a unique angle into how survivors process calamity and trauma, and each also develops Wells’s societal commentary. The artilleryman is overcome by what he has witnessed. Almost immediately upon entering the narrator’s home, he “put his head on his arms, and began to sob and weep like a little boy, in a perfect passion of emotion” (59). However, he soon regains his composure and delivers useful information to the narrator—and later to his fellow soldiers—about what he witnessed at Horsell Common. Furthermore, despite his experiences, the artilleryman has the fortitude to return to his post; like the military he represents, the artilleryman remains capable of fighting to protect his country, at least for the time being. However, Wells previews the descent that will afflict him by the time the narrator reencounters him in Book 2. Firstly, it is symbolic that he survives his company’s destruction at Horsell Common by “lying under a heap of charred dead men and dead horses” (59). These circumstances anticipate how he will benefit from the abandoned wreckage of London later on. Secondly, though the artilleryman’s idea to “ransack the house” and fill “every available pocket with packets of biscuits and slices of meat” before the two men leave the narrator’s house is prudent (62), it establishes a habit of stockpiling other people’s wealth that will form the basis of Wells’s criticism of the military.

The curate, whose occupation should make him a valuable resource for the narrator and others reeling from the invasion, instead is completely useless, incapacitated by his inability to make sense of what is happening within the framework of his religion. The curate alternates between questioning why all of this is happening and spouting scripture: “What have we done—what has Weybridge done? […] The church! We rebuilt it only three years ago. Gone! Swept out of existence! Why? […] The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever!” (77). Soon, the narrator recognizes that “[t]he tremendous tragedy in which [the curate] had been involved […] had driven him to the very verge of his reason” (78). In this sense the curate acts as a stand-in for the organized religious institutions of Wells’s day, conveying his criticism of Christianity’s failure to grapple with the atrocities committed for imperialism and other forms of so-called progress.

Religion itself has a complex role in The War of the Worlds, and this is first explored meaningfully in this section as well. Over the course of the novel, the reader learns that the narrator believes in God. However, this belief seems to be highly personal and only comes up on occasion. The first clear reference to religion appears in the form of an allusion made by one of the soldiers the narrator meets on Saturday when investigating Horsell Common. Discussing the appearance of the Martians, the soldier says, “Octopuses, […] that’s what I calls ‘em. Talk about fishers of men—fighters of fish it is this time!” (44). Jesus is quoted in the Gospel of Mark as calling upon his disciples to be “fishers of men” (Mark 1:17), so the soldier is framing the fight against the Martians as a holy war. 

The narrator passes no judgment on this observation but shares an enthusiasm for the battle against the Martians: Following that conversation with the soldiers, the narrator’s imagination “became belligerent, and defeated the invaders in a dozen striking ways; something of my schoolboy dreams of battle and heroism came back” (45). Even later that night, as he prepares to return to the mayhem of Maybury, he confesses, “I had been feverishly excited all day. Something very like the war-fever that occasionally runs through a civilized community had got into my blood” (49). Whether the narrator’s excitement has a religious dimension is unclear, but his immersion in the Thames to escape the Martians at Weybridge and Shepperton evokes baptism, and he later describes his survival as “a miracle” (73). The story of the narrator (and humanity’s) escape from the Martians thus becomes a quasi-Christian story of (near) death, rebirth, and deliverance.

Wells further complicates his colonialism allegory by depicting both the humans and the Martians with charity. On Saturday morning, the narrator learns from his milkman that, even after the first massacre, the military hopes to avoid violence: “They aren’t to be killed, […] if that can possibly be avoided” (42). Ogilvy’s company’s initial request for military support “to protect these strange creatures from violence” and the subsequent approach under a white flag lay the groundwork for these peaceful aspirations (31), which remain after the Martians have shed blood. Given the predilection of the actual British military for violence, especially at that time in history, this characterization is somewhat far-fetched and serves in part to underscore the general cluelessness of the human response. At the same time, it adds some realism to the colonialism allegory, as Europeans were often surprised at the friendliness of the Indigenous peoples they themselves met with exploitation and violence.

The humanizing of the Martians in this section is speculative and therefore says as much about those doing the speculating as it does about the Martians. Nevertheless, it is notable that, after the curate refers to the Martians as “invulnerable” and “pitiless,” the narrator replies, “Neither the one nor, perhaps, the other” (79). That the narrator is willing to reserve judgment about the Martians even after having been nearly killed by them twice suggests that his recent makeshift baptism may have also fortified his sense of charity. It also hints that he found something relatable in the image of “the four carrying the debris of their comrade between them” after the British artillery took a Martian fighting-machine down (73). By putting mercy for the Martians into his narrator’s heart, Wells leaves open the possibility of redemption for the real-world invaders, his fellow Brits and Europeans, despite their seemingly unforgivable crimes.