War of the Worlds, Period 1, Sonam Sherpa, Discussion Director
First off I think that since I am the discussion director for this first week I should say that it would be greatly appreciated if everyone in our group could read the first five chapters of the book to answer some of my questions. My questions are as follows:
1. First off, what do all of you think of the book so far, do you think that this form of introduction into the book written by H.G. Wells was an effective way to start the book?
2. Second, I would like to know if you think that the foreshadowing used by H.G. Wells was too direct, and if it made it too easy to guess what would happen later on in the story? (What I mean by this is if you thought that by showing instances that denied the existence of martians was a way of foreshadowing that made the outcome too predictable, and therefore killed off any suspense that was meant to be built up.)
3. Third, I would like to know what were your first thoughts when the capsule had landed and started to move? Did you just happen to guess it was a martian? Or did you think something different, don’t by shy to tell us what you thought.
4. And finally I would like to hear some feedback on what were your thoughts when you learned more about the martians. Did you believe that they were capable of killing masses of people in one swoop? Or do you think it was just an overreaction made by the martians? You tell me, I would like to hear what you think about these extraterrestrials
I think that these four questions should keep you busy long enough.
Category: Discussion Director, Per 1 WotW DD | Tags: wotw per 1 DD 7 comments »
February 10th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Erin’s responses are as follows:
1. I think that this introduction is effective because it creates this naivety about all the people on Earth. Since we do not experience extraterrestrials on a day to day basis this makes the coming of the martians have more of an impact on the humans reactions.
2. I do not believe that H.G. Wells had a too direct of an introduction. The title of the book makes it quite obvious that there were going to be aliens in the book so him referring to them is not that big of a deal. Though I have to admit that it may have killed off some of the suspense.
3. Before the capsule started to move I thought that it was some explosive or something to kill the humans. Though later when it started to shake I assumed that there must have been martians in it.
4. I think that the martians were capable over killing groups of men at once. This is probably caused by all the fear placed into humans over extraterrestrials. Their appearance alone in this book is incredibly scary and overwhelming.
February 11th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Colin Easter
1. The introduction puts an interesting perspective on things by having the reader think of the alien’s point of view. Most importantly, it set the tone that the martians attack would be a complete surprise on the earth’s inhabitants. I feel that H.G. Wells took too long making pointless scientific references and could have gone straight to the action. However, seeing that the book was published in 1898, it would have been more important to the people of the time period. Long descriptions were common in that period, so the it may have been briefer than most introductions.
2.I feel that most of the foreshadowing is a good thing. When the outcome is obvious, you can focus more on the action (heat rays and slaughter) than worrying about what is going to happen to the narrator. This also allows for long, suspense building paragraphs to be cut out, allowing for more action. In this way, suspense is unneeded and can be considered a distraction.
3.It was obvious that the capsule was a martian due to the aforementioned suspense killers. Although, having previously read the book I already knew the answer. I remember it being obvious before, however.
4. Your fourth question seems unclear, but I’ll take it to mean whether they purposely killed masses of people. I think that the martians purposely killed all of those people. In the beginning of the book, the author said that they had to bring war to earth to survive. Not only that, but why would you make a novel about aliens without having massive destruction, slaughter, murder, and chaos? It would make no sense for the aliens to have “overreacted” by slaughtering groups of people by way of laser heat beams that instantly kill and set objects on fire. It is obvious that they did this on purpose.
February 11th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Taran Copenhaver
1. So far I like the story. I do belive that the introduction was effective at cathing your attention. I liked that he started with true facts about the revolutions and the age of Mars.
2. I think that it was not too easy for you to understand the story. He did come right out and tell that there was a war but he had never really gotten into what happened he just explained why the martians had to come to Earth.
3. I thought the capsule arriving on Earth was kind of cool because there was a certain type of mystery about it. I thought there were martians inside of it but I did not expect them to draw so much attention.
4. When I read about the martians I was reminded of a cartoon of aliens or the perfect sterotype of aliens. Most people think of little green men with big head or aliens with tentacles and brains in a jar. I did think that the aliens could kill large masses of people in one swoop because they would have to kill if they were launching missels to kill us. They would have to have a plan or advanced weapon that would kill in large masses just like us because it is a “War of Worlds”.
February 14th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
1. So far the story is okay. Some parts of the introdustion got my attention but not much. It was a little boring. I think htat once i have read the entire book i will understand it better.
2. It did kill of some of the suspense because I felt like i knew everything that was going to happen.
3. I knew there was going to be a mratian in it because of the cover of my book (i think i have a different cover than all of you.
4. Even though i knew that an alien was in the capsule i did not know the way they were going to react when they got out, just killing people. I kinda thought it would be like a cheesy alien movie like bring me to your leader earthlings. I was really wrong.
Amber =)
February 15th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Sonam
1. Well, Sonam I personally believe that the way that H.G.Wells had written the introduction to “War of the Worlds” was a very effective way to start the book. The reason why is because by not introducing all of the facts at first it shrouded the beginning of the story in mystery and then it forced the reader to read on so that they could unravel the storyline.
2. After reading some of your replies I would have to say that the foreshadowing that H.G.Wells used during the introduction of the story wasn’t too direct. It did happen to kill off some of the suspense, but I guess it was pretty obvious what the story was going to be about from the title.
3. I did happen to guess that when the capsule landed that martians were inside of it. This is due to the title and also because of all of the foreshadowing during the introduction.
4. I personally believed that the aliens would be more friendly than they were. This is just because in most stories about aliens they involve the aliens attacking earthlings, and I personally thought that would be tacky.
February 15th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Sonam
1. Well, Sonam I personally think that this book is very good so far. The reason why is because the interesting introduction used. I believe that this introduction was effective because it shrouded the introduction of the story in mystery and forced the reader to read on to unravel the rest of the story.
2. After reading some of your responses I do not believe that the foreshadowing used by H.G. Wells was too revealing. This is because the title did give away some of the storyline before you even started to read the actual book.
3. When the capsule first landed I did think that it was martians. This is because the title of the book is “War of the Worlds” and that gives away that most likely aliens or martians are going to be involved.
4. Well, personally Sonam I thought that the martians would be more friendly than they were. The reason why is because in most books that involve martians the martians are aggressive towards earthlings, and I just thought that it would have been tacky to follow this general use of martians in literature.
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Sonam: Might want to ask fewer questions in order to encourage deeper answers to the few you ask. Also, against, feel free to talk to one another-go back and forth.