A Martian/Human Parallel

Our class discussion of The War of the Worlds seemed to consistently circle around the topic of imperialism and how this social system relates to the invasion of the Martians. The connections seem fairly obvious: an outside society invades a country and seizes the resources they want while either ignoring or acting violently towards the current inhabitants. In the case of The War of the Worlds, that resource is human blood, which, of course puts a much more gruesome spin on things. However, our discussion in class put into question what purpose this horrifying act had in the context of the book and its connection to imperialism. We oscillated back and forth between the idea that the Martians were meant to mirror human nature and the idea that they were to serve as a warning to us. Wrapped up with this debate is the question of what Wells's own opinion of imperialism and colonialism is.

I'm not sure that I can come up with a conclusive decision regarding either of these debates; in fact, I'm sure that I can't. But in my opinion, after hearing many excellent points in class, Wells may not have thought imperialism to be a good thing, but he seemed to see it as a necessary evil. I say this because of something that was mentioned in class (I apologize that I can't remember who brought it up): the narrator never condemns the Martians for their actions. He is somewhat disgusted by them, but he constantly compares their actions towards humans with our own actions towards lesser species and "inferior races." As another enlightened student in class mentioned, it may not have been live or die for the Martians to kill humans but, along this same line, we kill lots of animals when we don't need to do so to survive. Taking this even further, the colonial powers did not need to take over other countries in order to survive, they did it for much more self-promoting reasons than even the Martians.

Support for this viewpoint can be found on the site entitled "Lensman's FAQ for The War of the Worlds." The creator of this site examines various themes of The War of the Worlds and he writes, "It may be a mistake to assume Wells condemned the evils of imperialism as thoroughly we do today. He was, after all, a citizen of a society ruling what was at the time the greatest empire on Earth. Despite Wells' depiction of the Martians as extremely repulsive and utterly without sympathy, he nonetheless suggests the Martians' actions are not so different than what we would have done in their place" (http://www.freewebs.com/wotwfaq/analysis.htm). At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I would take this one step further and say that what we as humans have done is worse because our immediate health and wellbeing were not at risk when we chose to colonize other peoples.