Book Summary
War of the Worlds starts with off as a normal day in Woking, England, but that night astronomers observe flares of light and energy on the surface of Mars. This continues every twenty four hours for ten days. Later on, the first of ten pods land nearby in the pine forest and the narrator is one of the first to see the cylindrical capsules. Out of these capsules five Martian tripods will arise, straining against the greater gravity of earth. These tripods send the narrator on the run across England only stopping to take refuge at night, to find his wife in Leatherhead. Upon his journey he is aided by a few survivors, the first of whom is the artilleryman. They set off together and travel a good distance, but are later separated by a Martian attack. The narrator escapes, but scalded by the water heated to near boiling by the Martian’s heat ray. While by himself he discovers the Martian’s new weapon of mass destruction, a capsule of toxic black smoke that runs across the ground with the likeness of a liquid. The narrator later finds himself taking refuge with a man called the Curate. While taking refuge a capsule lands on the house they were hiding in and part of the building collapses trapping them inside. Here, while trapped together, the narrator realizes he can’t stand the nearly mental Curate. While the whole time, all they know of the outside world is what they can see through a small crack in the wall that overlooks the newly formed Martian pit. Days later the narrator discovers how the Martians feed when they capture the Curate. The Martians feed by extracting the blood of humans and animals through a tube tipped with a syringe. Soon after the noise of Martian machinery stops and the narrator crawls out of the ...
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...s, the story of The War of the Worlds lives on centuries later. It is very suiting that the book is carried on into real world events. Like the desire to know the unknown was driven by this story, inspiring scientists and astronomers today. As well as fear was carried on through the radio broadcast. This makes the story that much greater developing it’s widespread influence. A true statement of how popular this story is the fact that it’s a British book, yet an American classic.
Works Cited
Keller, Charles R., II. "Biography." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 27 May 2014. .
"War of the Worlds: How Orson Welles Drew the Nation into a Shared IIlusion."War of the Worlds: How Orson Welles Drew the Nation into a Shared IIlusion. Transparency, n.d. Web. 26 May 2014. .
Many novels have been written about the great wars, but few are as absorbing, captivating and still capable of showing all the horrors of the battle as Timothy Findley's "The Wars"1. After reading the novel, critics and readers have been quick to point out the vast examples of symbolism shown throughout the novel. Even the author himself commented at the vast examples of symbolism throughout the novel, "Everything in that book has a life of its own. It's a carrier too -- all the objects are carriers of someone else's spirit"2. Although the novel is very symbolic, the most bare-faced and self explicit symbols are the natural elements that are inscribed on Robert's gravestone, "Earth and Air and Fire and Water"3. The symbolism of the natural elements begins a whole framework of ideas as their meanings continuously change throughout the novel. They begin as life supporting and domestic symbols which completely change on the battlefields of Europe. For Findley, this is what war does: it perverts and changes the natural elements from supporting life to the bringers of doom and destruction.
War of the Rats, written by David L. Robbins, and the movie Stalingrad, directed by Joseph Vilsmaier, are two excellent sources to be used in furthering one’s understanding of the second world war and specifically the battle of Stalingrad. Both of these sources cover generally the same material. They both are dramas about the battle of Stalingrad, yet each has their own unique perspective upon the war. These two sources can be used together to increase one’s knowledge on the subject at hand.
February 15th, 1898, all is quiet in Havana Harbor. The crew of the USS Maine is sound asleep less a few solitary watchmen. The brackish sea air and the calm ocean breeze are soothing and peaceful. This would hardly suggest the terror about to erupt on this “peaceful” visit to the Spanish-controlled Cuban harbor. At 9:45PM, a violent explosion rips the Maine apart sending it plummeting down to the muddy sea floor and killing nearly all of her crew. All of the Spanish boats in the harbor rushed to the aid of the American vessel and its survivors: the commander, Captain Charles D. Sigsbee, and a few lucky crewmembers. Even though Captain Sigsbee, a favorite of the Naval Department, urged President McKinley not to react in an aggressive manner toward Spain, the media, namely New York newspaper editors Pulitzer and Hearst, already inflating current issues relating to the Cuban revolution, spin the incident out of control. The American public goes mad with suspicion of Spanish fowl play and the sinking of the USS Maine serves as the immediate catalyst to the Spanish-American war.
In 1975, a young director named George Lucas wrote the story of the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker. The story was so long that it had to be broken up into a pair of trilogies, the first trilogy focusing on Anakin himself and the second focusing on his son, Luke. He determined the second trilogy to be the most exciting and resolved to film that one first. Unbeknownst to Lucas, he was creating what would soon become one of the most widely recognized and revered science fiction epics of all time. The epic is known to all, young and old, as Star Wars.
World War I is recognized as the first war, the Great War, the war of the nations and the war to end all wars. It was a conflict of wars that lasted from august 1914 to the final truce on November 11, 1918. Although it only lasted four years, it was the most destructive war that had ever happened in history. The death toll was about eight and a half million people and it wounded roughly twenty million or more. The war ended up destroying empires and economies and forever changing all of Europe. The allied powers had defeated the central powers, therefor leading to the fall of four empires and a huge change in the map of Europe. There are plenty of reasons on why World War I was so different from all the past conflicts. For example it was the first time in nearly one hundred years that all major countries where fighting. Another reason on why it was a different type of war was of the fact that the over sea had possessions. All the fighting was inevitable. A huge roll that made World War I truly modern was the Industrial Revolution. It was no longer a man-to-man war. The invention of guns as well as the machine gun made anybody a death threat.
War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells is a fiction story written about war and mankind’s coming of age. It is also a philosophical novel with many deep meanings underlying the shallow looking one-hundred-eighty-eight page book.
The War of the Worlds film (1953) as a Cold War film This is one of the best science fiction films of the twentieth century and it is also a Cold War classic film. The film was released in 1953, produced by George Pal and directed by Byron Haskin and it was the year's biggest science fiction film hit. The plot of the film is very different from the novel, which tells the story of a nineteenth century writer who journeys through London and its southern suburbs while the Martians attack and at the end he was reunited with his wife. In the film the protagonist is a Californian scientist who falls in love with a former college student after the Martian invasion begins in a small Californian town; he also reunited with his girlfriend at the end of the story. In both plots the aliens had no mercy on humans, used similar landing ships and had partially the same weapons.
In this historical and culturally divided book, Jill Lepore examines and tries to define the King Philips War and how people wrote about it. At the beginning of the colonies it was a start of a “New England" and after the King Philip’s War with all of the religious conflicts and war stories, a new American identity was born. Throughout this book she tells gruesome tales about murders, massacres, and battles. Even thought his book jumps a lot in chronically order she successfully tells the tales for both sides pretty accurately. I enjoyed reading some parts of this book. Especially the beginning and the middle because I thought the End dropped off and slowed down.
The book The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss is an in depth look at one of Roman history’s most legendary events, the gladiator revolt led by Spartacus. Spartacus has become a legend, creating a storyline that has inspired many movies and television shows, such as Stanley Kubrick’s epic Spartacus in 1960, starring the legendary Kirk Douglas. Spartacus has inspired a perfect mix of men over time with various backgrounds and beliefs, from Stalin and Marx, to Voltaire, and even to Ronald Reagan. How though, did Spartacus create a massive revolt of slaves that would create a massive problem for the mighty Rome? Strauss attempts to create a chronology of the Spartacus War using his vast knowledge of the Italian landscape, ancient documents, and archaeological evidence, as well as provide the reader with the historical reasons that might have created a perfect combination of causes to create the Spartacus legend.
The Great War , or as it is known now, World War One was a global conflict fought between the Allied Powers ; Great Britain, France, Russia, and the United States along will other smaller nations and the Central Powers ; Germany, Austria – Hungary, Turkey/Ottoman Empire and other small nations from 1914 to 1918. World War One began from a series of tumultuous events, that in turn affected the balance of alliances that had been made between countries at that time in the world.
“The real war will never get in the books” Walt Whitman, who had volunteered as a nurse in army hospitals, famously claimed in Specimen Days (1892) (Whitman). The American Civil War represents a decisive and far-reaching turning point in the development of the United States as a nation. But how much of the “real war” can actually be conveyed via literary narrative? The gruesome experiences of the soldiers and the aftermath of battle? What about the establishment of a national identity and the transformation or disintegration of national ideals and ideology? Writers such as Ambrose Bierce, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Francis Lieber, or Henry W. Bellows did attempt to provide representations of war experiences and provide interpretations of the conflict. Mid 19th-century American nationalism tended to employ literature as a means of sustaining national ideals, evoke patriotic feeling and provide meaning in the face of unprecedented human tragedies. A comparison between two essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862 can provide an assessment of the role of literature during the war. These texts have been chosen not as a comprehensive representation of political, social or perhaps aesthetic attitudes regarding the Civil War and its meanings, but rather as an indication of the various, often contradictory, responses the war provoked. A close reading of the essays will enhance our understanding not only of public interpretations of the Northern war aims, but also the conflicting views on national promise and idealized hopes for the future along with the notion of national crisis – or a possible crisis in art and representation.
War of the Worlds is a novel written by Herbert George (H.G.) Wells in the year 1898. It is a story of and alien invasion that takes place in London, England and how humanity as a whole come together in the toughest possible situation, against the odds, and in the face of adversity, and still come out victorious despite the countless numbers of dead. Destroyed buildings and landmarks. And at times loss of hope. In this report, I will be discussing three of the most important terms of the book: conflict, setting, and motif. The conflict, setting, and motif of War of the Worlds is: Man vs. Martian, early 20th century London, and Death (as the motif).
American involvement in Vietnam was largely in response to Cold War polices and Strategies. Kennedy took a much more laid back approach to Vietnam than Eisenhower did. He only wanted to support the South and not give them direct military aid by getting involved. Kennedy believed that the nations themselves should bear the burden of fighting the war and America would merely give them supplies and political support. However, the administration’s attempt to help the South largely failed because neither the South Vietnamese nor the Americans knew how to deal with guerrilla warfare. Another issue was that Diem’s support quickly declining to the point where it was just about his own family. He never trusted any popular government official in office, and would quickly replace them. Kennedy kept urging Diem to change his ways before all support for the South diminished (Kaiser). Between 1960 and 1968 Vietnam evolved into an American war and the tactics greatly affected the American soldiers.
A common desire among those who study history is to determine who is to blame for the occurrence of significant events; but can it be done? Since the late 1940’s, historians have been engaged in a running debate over who caused one of the longest and most complex conflicts in US history, the Cold War. The tension between the communist Soviet Union and capitalist United States originated in 1917 with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, when the communists expressed their hatred of western capitalism and desire to “communize” the rest of the world (Gardner, 403). As World War II came to a close, feelings of mistrust and fear between the US and USSR were amplified due to a number of military and political actions on both sides. However, it is difficult to place blame on one nation or another, due to the inherent hostile nature between these two forms of government (Bailey, 750). While orthodox historian Thomas A. Bailey writes that Soviet aggression is to blame for the Cold War, revisionist historian Martin F. Herz argues that American diplomatic mistakes are to blame instead. Post Revisionist Steven Ambrose takes an alternative stance on the cause of the war and places partial blame on the US for being hypersensitive to Soviet expansion, but also claims that the Cold War was inevitable and, at its core, caused by Stalin. Ultimately, when one analyzes the varying viewpoints of the Cold War through these historical interpretations, it becomes apparent that it is impossible to blame solely the United States or the Soviet Union for causing the conflict, but rather the actions taken after WWII by both nations which led to an atmosphere of mistrust and tension.
The author of The War of The Worlds H. G. Wells, used literary elements of irony and foreshadowing to portray the theme that there are people in this world who have a superiority complex that makes them believe that they are always in control no matter what. H. G. Wells was seen as the father of miniature war gaming.