Narrative

In order to present this story as a first person narrative, told by an "I" speaker who is a character in the book, Wells has to resort to some clever tricks. For one thing, the narrator is a scientist and a friend of an astronomer, Ogilvy: this gives him access to the world of astronomy when most of the news about the first projectile from Mars is not commonly talked about. Another method used is to have the narrator speaking from six years after the action has taken place, so that information that would not have been available during the Martian invasion, such as the details of their physiognomy, can be introduced into the book at appropriate times.

The most obvious narrative device, though, is in switching the action's point of view for several chapters into that of the narrator's brother. This is not a character whom readers...