H.G. Wells and Vegetarianism

To start, I'm going to note that I don't understand the hatred of Tom Cruise that's going on on this blog. To be sure, I'm creeped out by the guy, but I don't have a problem with him. He's been a very solid actor for years in Hollywood, and despite his recent turn as a religious nut, he proved in Tropic Thunder that he is capable of poking fun at himself. In any case, the poor film re-make of The War of the Worlds can probably be blamed more on Steven Spielberg than on Cruise.

Reading Mginsberg's post from the 19th opened my eyes to thinking about the possibility that Wells not only used the Martian invasion as a crude comparison for the British Empire's colonialism, but also to expose the human view of the "other." Human beings, upon finding something that is "alien" or "other," quickly seek to demonize it. In the case of British imperialism, "primitive" human beings are treated as less than human, just as the humans in War of the Worlds view the Martians as alien beings with no trace of humanity. Although the Martians come from another world and look grotesque to human eyes, the narrator reminds us that Martians may more or less embody the far future of the human race.

Mginsberg's final line about vegetarianism also led me to think about Wells's comparisons of the humans in his novel to animals. The humans are compared to dodos or sheep, and the aliens helplessly slaughter them, like animals in slaughterhouses. Quick research on Google of Wells's stance on vegetarianism finds that Wells was critically opposed to the wholesale slaughter of animals.

Wells's criticism of imperialism now seems like an open criticism of animal slaughter. However, he may, by drawing comparisons between the burning English countryside and slaughterhouses, be attempting to condemn cruelty of any living beings. The Martian slaughter of humans is no more cruel than the human slaughter of sheep, which is in turn no more cruel than the mass enslavement and murder of humans by other humans.

What Wells is trying to say is that humans cannot expect to be treated better by their fellow humans than they themselves treat helpless animals. If the Martians are blood-sucking monsters, they are no less monsters than the humans who benefit from the bloodshed of both human beings and animals.