How we cite our quotes: (Volume.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. […] Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread. (1.4.16)
The Martians aren't just different from humans, they're also disgusting. Now, are those two things – difference and disgust – related? We think they might be. That is, we can imagine a version of this book in which the Martians come out and they're totally different from us (like here), but they're beautiful. It's not that difference leads to disgust. But it's harder for us to imagine a book in which the aliens are still disgusting (like here), but not different. In some way, it seems like the Martians have to be recognizably different from us before they can be disgusting.
Quote #5
He [a soldier] turned, stared, bawled something about "crawling out in a thing like a dish cover"… (1.9.41)
If you see something that's totally foreign, how can you describe it? The soldier here finds a quick way to describe something unfamiliar: he makes a comparison between the unknown thing (the Martian machinery) and a known thing (a dish cover). (Wells' audience would know what a dish cover is, even if we don't use them so much anymore.) This is a quick way to describe something foreign, but there is a danger here: what if your description makes something seem too familiar? After all, who is going to be afraid of a dish cover? Not many people – but everyone here should be afraid of the Martian tripod.
Quote #6
Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal. (1.11.8)
We get a lot of talk in this book about how humans are like animals, and what would animals think, and how the narrator would never kill and eat a dog. (Actually, scratch that last one. The narrator totally wants to kill and eat a dog in Book 2, Chapter 5). But people are only like animals because… wait for it… the Martians are like people. Both Martians and humans use large mechanical vehicles that may scare the heck out of lower animals. (For more on how people are compared to animals in this book, check out "Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory.")