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How Does Hg Wells Create Tension In The War Of The Worlds

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The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

In the novel The War Of The Worlds, there is a constant feeling of terror and dread, which is heavily influenced by the Victorian sense of anxiety and worry about the world around them and their sudden rise to almost absolute power. Wells manipulates the culture of the time and so creates a novel which preys upon their underlying feelings of anxiety and resentment of the people they conquered. Having said this, there is an argument which can be created to challenge this view, which states that HG Wells' ideas cannot have the same effect on modern audiences as they did on Wells' contemporaries.

When Wells was writing The War Of The Worlds, there was a huge …show more content…

This can be seen in the book during the attack of the “Thunder Child”. It is an outdated, outmoded ship in the navy, but it manages to take down the supposedly almighty Martian. It can be said that this would scare Victorians, who had huge faith in their new ships.

Wells' Britain was changing, and another aspect of life, perhaps thought previously to never change, was religion. In the past religion controlled almost every aspect of life for British people, and it provided an easy means of escape from menial life. It explained the mysteries around them. But Wells was writing in a time when these comforts were being replaced by science. It was explaining the mysteries and people were beginning to doubt religion and God. Through the use of hyper-realism (imposing a fantasy story on a real world with real town names) he created a sense of unease because the aliens’ coming was not prophesised in the Bible, and yet he makes it seem very believable and real for aliens to come.

When arguing a point all these contextual issues must be taken into account. Wells was by no means writing in a vacuum. He, like all writers, was influenced greatly by his time's topical events. The difference here perhaps is that these events drove Wells to write. To a Victorian audience the idea that they were not the “top

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