The War of the Worlds · Chapter
XV: What Had Happened in Surrey explained
The chapter details the Martians' coordinated offensive in Surrey, including their use of black smoke canisters to systematically destroy artillery positions and spread poison gas across the countryside.
What happens
The chapter details the Martians' coordinated offensive in Surrey, including their use of black smoke canisters to systematically destroy artillery positions and spread poison gas across the countryside. The narrator and the curate witness the Martians' methodical advance and the collapse of organized human resistance, culminating in the fall of a fourth cylinder and the black smoke reaching Richmond.
Themes in this chapter
Technology and Destruction
The Martians' black smoke and Heat-Ray exemplify advanced technology used for systematic annihilation.
Social Order and Chaos
The collapse of organized military resistance and the disintegration of government highlight the fragility of social order.
Survival and Instinct
The narrator and curate's desperate hiding and the flight of soldiers and civilians underscore primal survival instincts.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Observes the Martian offensive from a ditch and later from a deserted house in Upper Halliford.
- The Curate
Panics and runs at the sight of the Martians, then joins the narrator in hiding.
- The Martians
Deploy in a crescent formation, use black smoke canisters and Heat-Rays to destroy artillery, and advance methodically toward London.
Key passages
“These Martians did not advance in a body, but in a line, each perhaps a mile and a half from his nearest fellow.”
The Martians spread out in a line, with about a mile and a half between each one.
Describes their tactical formation.
“The touch of that vapour, the inhaling of its pungent wisps, was death to all that breathes.”
Breathing even a small amount of that vapor was fatal to any living creature.
Explains the lethal nature of the black smoke.
“Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to their movements.”
By Sunday night, all organized resistance against the Martians had ceased.
Marks the collapse of human military efforts.