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Post by Charles on Jul 1, 2004 13:52:38 GMT
There are several inconsistencies and contradictions in the text. In your opinion, what is/are the most glaring?
Do you think any might have been intentional? Why?
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Post by Max on Jul 2, 2004 5:22:23 GMT
Off the top of my head: "A big greyish rounded bulk" which later becomes "There was something oily in the fungoid brown skin" and "two luminous disc-like eyes" becomes two dark coloured eyes"
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Post by Bayne on Jul 6, 2004 1:15:41 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Beyond lending additional realism and/or comment on the unreliable nature of first person accounts of events, what other reasons might Wells have for deliberate Inconsistencies? [/glow]
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Post by lanceradvanced on Dec 13, 2004 18:50:46 GMT
Off the top of my head: "A big greyish rounded bulk" which later becomes "There was something oily in the fungoid brown skin" and "two luminous disc-like eyes" becomes two dark coloured eyes" Could be just a matter of the lighting, backlit, and then front lit.. and the martian's eyes glowing like a cat's The one that I'm trying to get a grip on is the timing of the fall of the 5th cylinder, they seem to come one a night, but after the black smoke attack, they're trapped for at least a day and a half, and then cross Bushey park, where Wells said the 6 cylinder landed, either the martians slow down, or the Narrator missed the 6th and 7th shots somehow, and was actually hit by the 8th..
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Post by Curate on Dec 13, 2004 23:33:41 GMT
After the invasion, the narrator was never quite the same again. He was plagued by nightmares and panic attacks, suffered constant flashbacks and was full of guilt about the curate's death. This is a guy who watched people getting burned alive, who tripped over dead bodies in rainstorms and who saw the Martians kill a child. I'm pretty sure that this 'Martian invasion' syndrome would have affected 90% of the survivors who had experienced the invasion first hand. No doubt the first few decades of the 20th century witnessed a huge increase in the number of people seeking psychological help or admissions to insane asylums. Indeed, many war survivors would have remained in such institutions until their eventual deaths of old age in the 1960s and 70s. Did the Artilleryman end his days as a 90 year old man building toy forts in his padded cel? Is it any wonder that there's a few inconsistencies in the text? The narrator lived, but the war still ruined his life. I bet his marriage broke up as well.
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Post by Charles on Dec 14, 2004 5:01:20 GMT
The one that I'm trying to get a grip on is the timing of the fall of the 5th cylinder, they seem to come one a night, but after the black smoke attack, they're trapped for at least a day and a half, and then cross Bushey park, where Wells said the 6 cylinder landed, either the martians slow down, or the Narrator missed the 6th and 7th shots somehow, and was actually hit by the 8th.. Well spotted. We could say the Narrator just assumed the fourth cylinder fell in Bushey Park at midnight on Sunday - given his knowledge that the Martians fired one a night for ten nights - and realized the fifth buried them Monday night. He certainly should have spotted the fourth cylinder as they crossed Bushey Park Monday night - just before they stopped in Mortlake - though earlier in the text he says he learned of the fourth cylinder's landing after the war! He slips in "The Thunderchild" as well when he talks about his brother seeing the sixth cylinder fall when he was really seeing the fifth. We can remind ourselves he is writing the story six years after the war, but it isn't really a satisfying excuse - especially when we remember the Narrator presents himself as something of an authority on the invasion and has had all that time to piece together the details. I prefer to put these anomalies down to the fact Wells wrote the story over the course of a couple of years and details like this simply got lost.
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Post by Max on Dec 14, 2004 7:26:10 GMT
Valid points there folks. Nice speculation regarding the emotional fallout from the invasion. Still shudder at the TV shows premise that it was so shocking that everyone got selective amnesia...
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Post by Curate on Dec 14, 2004 22:53:17 GMT
"Hey Mom, didn't there used to be more buildings around here?" "I don't think so Billy." "And what about Uncle Frank? How come he never comes to visit us any more?" "Uncle who? Don't be silly Billy, you never had an Uncle." "And mom, what's this big manta ray thing lying on the street?" "New type of street light Billy"
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Post by csrider on Dec 15, 2004 1:38:48 GMT
Off the top of my head:
"A big greyish rounded bulk" which later becomes "There was something oily in the fungoid brown skin"
and "two luminous disc-like eyes" becomes two dark coloured eyes"
I think in the novel the first description of the martians is the description of the machines they first appeared in. He only said they were the martians because that's what he thought at the time. Later in the book he sees the real martians thatcome out of the tripods which is the second description.
As for the timing of the cylinders, many of the chapters are narrated from the point of view of his brother so we can assume that any knowledge of events he has from when he was captured came from his brother
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Post by Charles on Dec 15, 2004 1:55:12 GMT
Welcome to the board, csrider.
The Martians first emerged from their pit on Horsell Common on Friday night - and without machinery, hence the graphic physical description and mention of the sound of “a thud like the fall of a great mass of leather” when one toppled off the cylinder rim.
The Narrator’s brother only narrates three chapters. The time frame is Monday and Tuesday, then he passes out of the story altogether. He knew even less about current events than the Narrator.
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Post by malfunkshun on Dec 30, 2004 20:49:29 GMT
actually the narrators brother doesn't narrate any of it, it is being narrated by the narrator (narrator anyone?) as if it were told to him by his brother and he was retelling it
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Zoe
Full Member
Posts: 105
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Post by Zoe on May 11, 2005 16:27:47 GMT
Well spotted. We could say the Narrator just assumed the fourth cylinder fell in Bushey Park at midnight on Sunday - given his knowledge that the Martians fired one a night for ten nights - and realized the fifth buried them Monday night. He certainly should have spotted the fourth cylinder as they crossed Bushey Park Monday night - just before they stopped in Mortlake - though earlier in the text he says he learned of the fourth cylinder's landing after the war! He slips in "The Thunderchild" as well when he talks about his brother seeing the sixth cylinder fall when he was really seeing the fifth. We can remind ourselves he is writing the story six years after the war, but it isn't really a satisfying excuse - especially when we remember the Narrator presents himself as something of an authority on the invasion and has had all that time to piece together the details. I prefer to put these anomalies down to the fact Wells wrote the story over the course of a couple of years and details like this simply got lost. It occurs to me that while Ogilvy and the narrator noted ten explosions - one every night - on Mars that should not necessarily mean that they landed one per day. To the contrary, the relative positions of the Earth and Mars were changing over time and in the intervening period since the firing they must have become gradually further apart. So the cylinders would fall at increasing time intervals as the planets diverged....... Actually getting the cylinders to hit the eath would be an amazing feat of ballistic science! Getting them to land in England and around London would be miraculous! Zoe
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Post by Lensman on May 15, 2005 4:58:18 GMT
I don't know that I consider the narrator's inconsistancies all that meaningful. Peoples' memories aren't perfect. I know when discussing the history of our science fiction fan club, people sometimes get into arguments about what happened when etc. That's human nature. Why should we expect the narrator to remember everything in perfect detail, years after the events? In reality I suspect that Wells simply didn't weed out all the inconsistancies himself-- that's hardly a rarity in any novel.
As to the most significant-? Well I can't say that I noticed any myself, but others-- especially in WAR OF THE WORLDS: GLOBAL DISPATCHES-- noted that 10 gas explosions were observed on Mars, but only 7 cylinders were noted as landing. I've rationalized this away by suggesting the other 3 didn't land properly-- they landed in water, or hit rocks and the occupants didn't survive. However, I seriously doubt that's what Wells intended.
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Post by mctoddridesagain on May 17, 2005 12:38:05 GMT
I don't know that I consider the narrator's inconsistancies all that meaningful... In reality I suspect that Wells simply didn't weed out all the inconsistancies himself-- that's hardly a rarity in any novel. That's a nail-hammer interface scenario, Lensman. I'd add that probably if you examined in the kind of detail seen on this board pretty well any novel by any author, you'd pick up a load of niggling inconsistencies.
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keltiksylk
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www.KelticSylk.com
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Post by keltiksylk on May 18, 2005 13:25:13 GMT
I don't think the inconsistancies have ever bother me. In fact I never noticed them until I started visiting these forums...The story is real enough to get caught up in and I always do, even after reading it about 20 times as a kid. Even today, in middle age, it's still a good story.
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Post by Lensman on May 20, 2005 6:24:16 GMT
if you examined in the kind of detail seen on this board pretty well any novel by any author, you'd pick up a load of niggling inconsistencies. Exactly. BTW I agree on the dark/luminous eyes thing. If the Martians' eyes are more sensitive to light, like a cat's-- and their world being significantly farther from the sun, that makes sense-- it's entirely possible their eyes may look dark in most conditions, but "luminous" if they're in a dark area gazing into the light-- again, like a cat's eyes.
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JohnF
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Post by JohnF on May 20, 2005 15:40:35 GMT
I found an inconsistency in the description of the collecting basket on the back of the fighting machine hood. In the storm it is described as being "a huge thing of white metal, like a gigantic fisherman's basket". later on when the narrator is trapped in the ruined house, it is described as "a little cage that hunched on its back". Could there perhaps be different sizes of basket?
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keltiksylk
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Post by keltiksylk on May 23, 2005 3:25:54 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Beyond lending additional realism and/or comment on the unreliable nature of first person accounts of events, what other reasons might Wells have for deliberate Inconsistencies? [/glow] What is really strange is that the two descriptions are only a paragraph apart.
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Post by Amasov on Jun 2, 2005 1:26:36 GMT
Off the top of my head: "A big greyish rounded bulk" which later becomes "There was something oily in the fungoid brown skin" and "two luminous disc-like eyes" becomes two dark coloured eyes" Maybe they were exhibiting physical symptoms of the bacterial infection when he described them later on.
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alabaster
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Watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's...
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Post by alabaster on Jun 9, 2005 9:55:27 GMT
I think the biggest inconsistency was that the Martians were supposed to be to us as we are to lemurs, and had been watching our planet for millions of years, yet it didn't occur to them to take note of our planet's most numerous organisms; bacteria and viruses.
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