The War of the Worlds Exile Quotes

Exile has both a literal meaning in this book and a metaphorical meaning. Here we see the metaphorical meaning of exile. Just as a human might look down on some tiny microscopic bacteria, so the Martians might look down on us. In other words, to them, we're tiny and not so important. Kind of makes you feel like you've lost your place in the universe, doesn't it?

"Inferior animals" nicely brings together two statements the narrator makes soon after, about how humans treat inhumanely both animals (like the bison and the dodo) and our "own inferior races" (like the Tasmanians) (1.1.6). In case you missed it at the beginning, here's another reminder that the British are about to be removed from their role at the top of the food chain. (And in that food chain, the British are above both animals and other peoples.)

After the Martians come out, the humans scatter, and we get a brief image of what a world without humans would look like. Notice that the sky is "burning" because of the sunset. All together now: foreshadowing! Soon it will be the people who are burning and then we'll really see what a world without humans looks like. That's an example of literal exile.

With this passage, we're back to metaphorical exile. We've mostly argued that the Martian attack displaces humanity from top dog to… just another mid-sized dog. There's another way to look at exile, though, which is that the Martian invasion makes the world weird. Think of it: you're at home ("home" = "Earth"), when some Martians drop by and start moving your stuff around. Suddenly, your home doesn't seem so homey anymore. Here, the Martian Heat-Ray makes the narrator think differently about the common.

There's one possible benefit of exile. When you're on top, you don't have to think about certain issues or stretch yourself to learn. (Not sure what you mean? Let's use a concrete example. For much of the 20th century, the language that everyone wanted to speak was English. Maybe in France people would learn both French and English, but in England or the US, you could get by just speaking English, so people who spoke English didn't need to stretch themselves and learn a new language.) Here, the narrator is starting to reconsider the lives of animals. Whereas we may think that ironclads are totally normal, animals might be freaked out by them.

And we're back to literal exile. Now, literal exile might not sound very interesting – it's just people who lived somewhere now have to go elsewhere. But we can also think about exile and colonialism/imperialism. When Britain (and other colonial powers) started to come into an area, whoever was there before would have to make space for these invaders. This literal exile is just the British being treated as they treated others.

We've discussed before how the arrival of the Martians puts people in the place of animals. That is, rather than people hunting animals, we now have Martians hunting people. This passage is related (it's about people becoming animals), but slightly different, since the Martians aren't present. Also, while we think this is an interesting example of human exile, we should keep in mind that the narrator might be a little biased about the curate.

Once again, we see how the Martians are making the Earth unearthly, leading the narrator to feel as if he were exiled to some place new and foreign. What makes this sense of exile worse, of course, is that this is happening without the narrator actually leaving. As he says here, he's still in Sheen, but he doesn't recognize it.

Again, we're in the realm of the metaphorical. The narrator used to believe that humans have a special relationship with God – after all, in the Book of Genesis, God gives "dominion" over the Earth to humans. But the coming of the Martians makes him reconsider. Does God not particularly care about humans vs. any other living beings?

After all that exile – both metaphorical and literal – where do we end up? With all his soul-searching about God and animals, the narrator seems to think that we're still in charge here. Is he serious? Is he missing something? He later says some things that make it seem like he's not so sure, like when he notes that the Martians might inherit the universe. But how does he reach this conclusion?