The War of the Worlds · Chapter
The Man on Putney Hill explained
The narrator encounters an artilleryman who has formulated an elaborate plan for human survival underground, arguing that humanity must adapt to a new existence beneath the Martians' notice, preserving knowledge and breeding a hardy race.
What happens
The narrator encounters an artilleryman who has formulated an elaborate plan for human survival underground, arguing that humanity must adapt to a new existence beneath the Martians' notice, preserving knowledge and breeding a hardy race. The narrator initially embraces the vision but begins to doubt its feasibility as they work on a tunnel.
Themes in this chapter
Survival and Instinct
The artilleryman's plan centers on raw survival, advocating for a feral, underground existence to preserve the human breed.
Social Order and Chaos
The chapter contrasts the old social order—represented by clerks and suburban life—with the chaotic new reality where only the ruthless can endure.
Evolution and Natural Selection
The artilleryman's eugenic rhetoric about weaklings dying and the strong breeding reflects a distorted application of natural selection to human society.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
The narrator listens to the artilleryman's plan, works with him on the tunnel, and begins to question the practicality of the scheme.
- The Artilleryman
The artilleryman outlines his vision of an underground society, advocating for survival through secrecy, eugenics, and eventual rebellion.
Key passages
“They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It’s a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race.”
The artilleryman argues that the weak should willingly die to avoid contaminating the human gene pool.
This statement encapsulates the eugenicist ideology that permeates the artilleryman's survival plan.
“We must make great safe places down deep, and get all the books we can; not novels and poetry swipes, but ideas, science books.”
The artilleryman proposes building secure underground shelters and preserving scientific knowledge rather than literature.
This highlights the prioritization of practical knowledge over art in the post-invasion world.
“Such a hole I could have dug in a day. But I believed in him sufficiently to work with him all that morning until past midday at his digging.”
The narrator realizes the tunnel is poorly constructed but continues to help, showing his initial faith in the plan.
This marks the beginning of the narrator's doubt about the artilleryman's competence.