The first half of Book 2 returns to the narrator and the curate, spotlighting the complete decay of their relationship. Wells uses the curate to flesh out his criticism of the moral ineptitude of organized religion. The curate’s trauma robs him of all but the most basic desires; when the narrator attempts to limit the curate’s intake of food and drink, in which he has begun to indulge “impulsively in heavy meals at long intervals” (146), thereby putting their long-term survival at risk, the curate responds with threats to alert the Martians to their presence, which he eventually fulfills. Through this character, Wells lambasts the motivations and leadership of the church, suggesting that their selfishness and inflexibility have not only enabled but worsened the calamities of colonialism and industrialization.

However, this criticism is tempered by a modicum of hypocrisy in the narrator’s treatment of the curate. The narrator, too, is struggling with what he has seen and experienced, and he does not always manage these struggles with grace. This double standard presents itself from the very first page of Book 2, when the narrator complains “of the sight of [the curate’s] selfish despair” (127), which bothers him so much that he locks himself away from his companion. Earlier on that same page, the narrator speaks of experiencing “anxiety for [hos] wife” so intense that he “pace[s] the rooms and crie[s] aloud” (127). Rather than seeing commonality in their mutual despair, the narrator isolates himself in a way that allows the curate’s trauma to fester—a subtle example of The Erosion of Morals in Times of Duress. 

Moreover, the narrator is also guilty of reckless decisions that put them at risk of death. After the two rest for a time in a shed in Chapter 1 of Book 2, the narrator decides to go on before the curate is ready, a move he describes as “the most foolhardy thing [he] ever did. For it was manifest the Martians were about [them]” (130). If not for a conveniently located ditch, both men would likely have met their ends. This, too, suggests that things might have turned out differently had the narrator treated his companion with more charity.

Their near-death experience upon emerging from the shed begins a pattern that will repeat across the first half of Book 2: that of risky behavior inadvertently providing the narrator with the experiences that will allow him to claim that “no surviving human being saw so much of the Martians in action as [he] did” (142). At this moment, the narrator watches a Martian use his fighting-machine to pluck up human victims and deposit them “into the great metallic carrier which projected behind him […]. It was the first time I realized that the Martians might have any other purpose than destruction with defeated humanity” (130). Later, the horrified narrator sees that the Martians capture humans to feed on them.

Although this process is so horrifying to the narrator that he “could not endure even to continue watching” (139), he also voices a certain admiration for it: “The physiological advantages of the practice of injection are undeniable,” the narrator asserts, “if one thinks of the tremendous waste of human time and energy occasioned by eating and the digestive process” (139). This observation is one of many contradictory evaluations the narrator makes as part of a long section of Chapter 2 of Book 2 in which he discusses the discoveries he made while studying the Martians through the peephole. Martians are in many ways far simpler organisms than humans. They have no noses, no digestive systems (hence the blood injection), and no need for sex or sleep. The narrator cannot help but admire the evolutionary brilliance of their simple, efficient forms. He envies their lack of digestive tracts for “lift[ing] [them] above all these organic fluctuations of mood and emotion” (139), and he similarly praises their asexuality for freeing them from “the tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men” (140). Ultimately, the narrator shares his belief that humans “are just in the beginning of the evolution that the Martians have worked out” (143); humas, too, will “become practically mere brains, wearing different bodies according to their needs” (143). Wells therefore implies that the thing that makes the Martians most alien—their physical appearance—is secondary to the intelligence that they share with humans.

In terms of the colonialism allegory, recognizing these Martians as humanity’s destiny humanizes the oppressor without exonerating them. Whether humans are evolving into them or not, Wells still makes his Martians grotesque and so cautions against giving way to the trends that might lead to such a future. A similar critique underpins the novel’s depiction of technology, including the narrator’s observations about the Martians’ handling-machines: “The contrast between the swift and complex movements of these contrivances and the inert, panting clumsiness of their masters was acute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter were indeed the living of the two things” (147). The implication is that something is amiss in a society where intelligent life has given over its most prized attributes to the machines it has built.