The bravery of the narrator

[Curate]

Was the narrator's sense of bravery enhanced by his survival at Weybridge, then added to by his escape from the pit after two weeks in the ruined house?
Soon after the incident with the curate, he spends the night in an inn at the top of Putney Hill where he seems to have no fear of sleeping in one of the regular bedrooms. Now, I've often thought about what I'd do were the Martians to invade, and there's no way I would be brave enough to sleep in a regular bedroom, particularly an upstairs one. I'd drag a mattress down to the basement and sleep there if need be. Or maybe uproot some floorboards and sleep hidden away out of sight altogether.
Then, following his reunion with the Artilleryman, he has no problem lighting a lamp for the sake of a game of cards. After seeing what the Martians do to humans, I'd be scared stiff to even so much as light a match.
And as for running towards a fighting machine in order to end it all... if he was that determined to die then maybe it would have been better to simply break into a Doctor's surgery and overdose on tablets. Getting my blood drained by hideous creatures wouldn't exactly be a pleasant death. That said, it's a good job he did go for the Martian option

[MartianAmbassador]

I dont think I would be afraid of the tripods. The martians would be the focus of my fear although its a good chance that I would kill them if they tried to apprehend me.

[HTT]

[glow=purple,2,300]It's hard to say if he's brave or not. - how much of what he says is true? Remember - it's written by the Writer. Now, when you first recount a tale - there's not much to it. So, you embellish it a bit. On the next re-telling, you spice it up a bit more. The story grows with each re-telling till it bears little resemblance to actual events. And the more you tell the tale, the more you belive it.

After all, it's better to say "I'm dead hard I am, look at me stride heroically upstairs by lamplight with no fear." rather than "I shat my pants and cowered like a big girls blouse in the cellar". Like with the Curate - did he really use the blunt end of the axe, or is he just saying that to make himself look better?
[/glow]

[mctoddridesagain]

Good points. Leon Stover, in his critical edition, has an extremely (excessively, IMHO) dim view of the Narrator.

I've always felt that, if not 100% accurate, he was at least being pretty straight - after all, he could have just said that the Curate was snatched by the Martians, no-one could have contradicted him.

[Lensman]

Curate said:

Soon after the incident with the curate, he spends the night in an inn at the top of Putney Hill where he seems to have no fear of sleeping in one of the regular bedrooms. Now, I've often thought about what I'd do were the Martians to invade, and there's no way I would be brave enough to sleep in a regular bedroom, particularly an upstairs one. I'd drag a mattress down to the basement and sleep there if need be. Or maybe uproot some floorboards and sleep hidden away out of sight altogether.
Then, following his reunion with the Artilleryman, he has no problem lighting a lamp for the sake of a game of cards.

Is this actually bravery? Or is it continued desperate attempts to ignore the reality of the situation? "Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal."

I can't say that I have ever been impressed with the "bravery" of the Narrator, on any reading of the novel. He did occasionally manage to keep his head while others about him were panicing... but then, so did Harry Flashman, a self-professed sniveling coward.

[mctoddridesagain]

Absolutely, and that, I think, is the point. Wells didn't want the cheap sensationalism of the typical action novel, with an 'heroic' protagonist. There are no heroes (at least no named heroes) in WotW, the closest being the (anonymous) crew of the Thunder Child.

The Narrator is there to report on events; in order to have the best view of the Martians he must, of necessity, get pretty close to them. But at the same time, he can't indulge in cheap heroics, that would really go against Wells's grain. Hence he can appear at times passive; at times dilatory; at times selfishly irresponsible; at times borderline murderous.

But he is never a hero, if by that we mean someone who goes out to make a cheap gesture. He merely observes and survives.

[Lensman]

I completely agree that it was not Wells intent to write a heroic story. But I think you're being a bit unfair when you say the crew of the Thunder Child were the only ones to display bravery. The artillerists, particularly later on in the novel when the danger was starkly clear, who manned their guns in the face of certain death certainly deserve accolades. And there might be others if one went thru the book and looked carefully.

[mctoddridesagain]

Fair points, Wells wasn't completely pessimistic about how people would behave; but they are all anonymous examples, and don't detract from the general sense that Wells didn't believe in penny dreadful heroics. Plus there are numerous examples of decidedly unheroic action: the general panicky flight of the refugees; the crews of the destroyers sent up the Thames who mutiny and return to the sea; and probably others. Wells is more cynical than optimistic about human behaviour in WotW.

The skirt-chasing old curmudgeon...

[keltiksylk]

You wouldn't want to sleep in the lower floors because of the Black Smoke. You'd be safer above ground...Never thought of this before, but this would be a big hole in the artillery man's plans also. If the Martians wanted to get at the humans, all they would have to do is flood the tunnels with smoke.

[Lensman]

keltiksylk said:

You wouldn't want to sleep in the lower floors because of the Black Smoke. You'd be safer above ground...Never thought of this before, but this would be a big hole in the artillery man's plans also. If the Martians wanted to get at the humans, all they would have to do is flood the tunnels with smoke.

I think it's quite interesting how so many forum members talk about the artilleryman's speech about carrying on the fight as guerilla warfare. When I read it, it came across as all talk and no action, or "talking a good fight". Yet many forum members discuss it as a sort of anticipation of Churchill's speech "...we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender..."

If Wells truly meant WotW to be an analog of Britain's conquest of Tasmania, then all the artilleryman's talk is just bluster. OTOH if he was thinking of the Indian Mutinies, then perhaps we are meant to interpret the artilleryman's speech as something that might actually have come to pass.