What is the point of view in The War of the Worlds?
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells is told from the first-person point of view. The narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the story, lives in Woking with his wife and writes philosophical papers. He relates his experiences when the Martians invade earth, yet he does so in a rather bland, mostly unemotional way. Indeed, he does become upset, shocked, and horrified at what he sees before him, but he also expresses his experiences in a mostly objective fashion.
This is actually a rather unusual choice for a first-person narrative. Most tales from this perspective focus much more on the narrator's feelings and allow readers to better identify with the storyteller. In The War of the Worlds, the audience does not identify as well with the narrator, even though they may be fascinated by his story.
Wells also makes his first-person narrator unusual in that he speaks of...
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experiences that do not happen to him personally. He relates, for example, the experiences of his brother and even explains his brother's thoughts and feelings. In this, he actually acts more like a third-person narrator, even though he still speaks in the first person.
The author, then, plays with the first-person point of view, using it to draw his readers into the story and show them what happens from an insider's perspective while allowing his narrator to maintain an objective stance and even relate the experiences of others.
In The War of the Worlds, what is the perspective of humanity?
Good question. Four perspectives combine in this classic work of science fiction. First and most literally, what's happening to humanity is viewed through the perspective of an educated human. Second, though, that person is placed in the position of a colonized country, with his rights and expectations crushed by superior technology. Third, humanity is viewed biologically, as part of an evolutionary conflict. Fourth, humanity is seen as a pest, barely worth the alien's time to fight. Instead, they are exterminating us, as a human might fumigate a piece of land he wants to build a house on.