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How does War of the Worlds (a novel written in the late C19th) succeed in attracting and keeping the attention of a reader in the early C21st? When I started to read ‘The War of the Worlds’, I noticed a lot of things that sounded strange, because of the C19th background. One example is unusually, long words like ‘scrutinized’ used in the opening paragraph. In a modern piece of writing, the author would probably use the meaning of scrutinized, using more simple terminology. Wells also uses very long sentences and different sentence structures depending on whether or not he wants to give the reader a long detailed description, or be short and straight to the point, The introductory sentence is actually seven lines long ‘No one…………water’. Wells is describing a similar but different world to the C21st. Reader. The C19th background and detail didn’t put me off. Instead it made me think about their views and technology. The technology used in those days is quite different from nowadays the ‘clockwork telescope’ would probably be computerised and we would not hear the ticking. When Stent and Ogilvy “telegraphed” from Horsell thinking there might be a collision a modern author would have the character in the same situation send a text message or make phone call on their mobile. When it got dark, people got out their “lanterns” rather than getting their pocket I found the novel not just interesting because it gave me ideas about how people lived 100 years ago; it was also interesting because of the view H.G Wells put forward, as it gave me an all-round view of how people behave in all conditions. I think that in the late 1800’s (Victorian era) we owned 25% of the land.
Approximate Word count = 1127
Approximate Pages = 4.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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