Chapter Summaries for Book 2

Book 2 of The War of the Worlds delves into the aftermath of the Martian conquest and humanity’s struggle for survival. These chapter summaries provide a breakdown of key moments, the narrator’s journey through a devastated world, and the fate of the Martian invaders.

Book 2: The Earth Under the Martians

Chapter 1: Under Foot

The narrative returns to the narrator and the curate, trapped in a deserted house since Sunday evening, surrounded by the deadly Black Smoke. The narrator is tormented by anxiety for his wife.

On Monday afternoon, a passing Martian disperses the smoke with powerful steam jets, smashing the house’s windows and scalding the curate’s hand as he flees the room. For the first time, they glimpse a strange redness spreading across the scorched landscape.

Realizing escape is now possible, the narrator resolves to head for Leatherhead. Having learned from the Artilleryman, he gathers provisions and fresh clothes. The curate, initially insisting on staying, quickly changes his mind when the narrator prepares to leave.

By 5 p.m., they set out together, traveling through roads littered with contorted bodies, overturned carts, and abandoned luggage—all blanketed in thick black dust. The narrator likens the devastation to the ruins of Pompeii. Crossing a bridge, they notice red masses floating downstream.

They pass through a populated area that has so far escaped the Martians’ destruction, but here they stumble into the path of a tripod fighting machine. Fortunately, the machine does not notice them, and they hide in a shed.

As evening falls, the narrator resolves to press on, but the curate wants to remain hidden. Fearful of being left alone, he reluctantly follows. Along the way, they witness a horrifying scene: a Martian tripod pursuing scattered humans, scooping them up with its metallic tentacles, and tossing them into the basket on its back. Overcome with terror, they hide again, not daring to move until near midnight.

Eventually, they reach the town of Sheen, deserted but not destroyed. They try one house with no success, but in the second find provisions to sustain them. The curate, now eager to move on, is persuaded by the narrator to rest and regain their strength.

Their reprieve is short-lived. Suddenly, a vivid green light appears, and part of the house collapses around them. The narrator is knocked unconscious and awakens to find the curate, head bloodied, tending to him. The curate warns him to remain still—the Martians are right outside. The fifth cylinder has struck the house they were sheltering in.

As the Martians noisily construct a new pit, the two sneak into a more protected section of the damaged house. They discover the pantry is still intact, and after a long rest, the narrator finds food, soon joined by the curate.

Chapter 2: What We Saw From the Ruined House

A triangular opening in the wreckage of the house offers the narrator and the curate a view of the Martians’ activities. The fifth cylinder has obliterated the first house they searched, leaving the landscape irrevocably transformed. Taking turns at the peephole, the pair observes the pit and the Martians’ operations.

The Martians have constructed intricate handling machines—spider-like, with five jointed legs and numerous tentacles—each piloted by a Martian acting as its brain. The narrator is fascinated by the multiplanar movements of their joints and notes the presence of simpler, unmanned digging machines.

Through no design of his own, the narrator gains the closest view of the Martians and their machines of any survivor. He describes the Martians as little more than a giant, bodiless brain with sixteen slender, whiplike tentacles. Supplementing his account with post-war knowledge gained from scientific studies, he explains that they lack a digestive system, instead injecting the blood of their victims directly into their veins. Some bipedal creatures were brought from their own planet as a temporary food supply, though this was not known at the time.

The narrator becomes convinced that the Martians communicate telepathically, a theory he would have previously rejected. He also observes the vigorous spread of the “red weed,” an alien plant sprouting cactus-like branches and red fronds that weave their way through the countryside.

Chapter 3: The Days of Imprisonment

Days pass as the narrator and the curate remain trapped in the collapsed house, their forced cohabitation becoming increasingly unbearable. Their incompatibility leads to constant tension. They argue over turns at the peephole, and the curate’s compulsive overeating and drinking wastes their limited provisions. His incessant, irrational muttering grates on the narrator’s nerves, and his growing carelessness escalates the danger. The tension builds to the point where the narrator resorts to threats and, eventually, physical blows.

Outside, the Martians continue their relentless work. They construct new machines and deploy a contraption that turns ordinary clay into white aluminum bars, a striking display of their advanced technology. The fluidity and complexity of the machines’ movements astound the narrator, appearing more lifelike than the Martians themselves. A close-up view confirms the presence of a Martian inside the hood of a tripod fighting machine.

At one point, the pair witnesses the horrifying reality of the Martians’ feeding rituals: a man is plucked from a metal basket and taken into the pit via a tentacle, where he is consumed. This gruesome sight temporarily dulls the allure of the peephole.

While the narrator wracks his brain for an escape plan, the curate descends further into madness, utterly broken by the horrors they’ve witnessed.

Chapter 4: The Death of the Curate

By day six of their entrapment, the narrator catches the curate stealing provisions again. Furious, he rations out ten days’ worth of food and stands guard to prevent further theft. Tensions between them escalate over the next two days, but neither physical violence nor kind persuasion can reach the curate, who is consumed by his weakness and growing insanity.

On day eight, the curate’s incessant muttering grows louder and more uncontrollable, despite the narrator’s desperate attempts to quiet him. By day nine, his zealous outbursts and fanatical proclamations reach a fever pitch, threatening to reveal their hiding place to the Martians.

In a desperate bid to silence him, the narrator chases the curate with a knife but strikes him only with the handle, knocking him unconscious. It is too late—the Martians have heard them.

A handling machine looms outside their peephole, its metallic tentacle reaching into the room to investigate. The narrator flees undetected, but the unconscious curate is not so fortunate. The narrator listens in horror as the curate’s body is dragged across the floor. (I must confess I cheered at this point. I’m sorry, but good riddance—he was going to get our boy killed!)

Escaping into the coal cellar, the narrator hides among firewood and coal, sealing the door behind him. Moments later, the metallic tentacle returns, scraping along the door and, to his terror, opening the latch. Helpless, he lies in agonizing silence as the tentacle explores the room, brushing against his boot at one point. Nearly overcome with fear, he holds his breath, praying for safety. To his relief, the tentacle withdraws, fussing briefly in the pantry before abandoning the house.

The narrator remains in his cramped hiding place for two more days, too terrified to crawl out—even for the water he so desperately needs.

Chapter 5: The Stillness

After two days of hiding in the coal cellar, the narrator finally emerges to find the pantry ransacked by the Martians, the provisions gone. For the first time, he succumbs to despair. Starving and dehydrated, he dares to drink tainted rainwater from the noisy pump by the sink on day twelve, relieved when the sound does not alert the Martians.

For the next two days, he survives on rainwater alone, growing increasingly weak. He begins to fear he’s gone deaf, as the once-constant noise of the Martians has ceased entirely. The red weed has grown across the hole in the wall, casting the house in an eerie crimson light.

On day fifteen, the sound of a dog sniffing and scratching outside jolts him. The dog’s nose pokes through the red fronds around the opening, and the narrator, desperate with hunger and fearful it might attract the Martians, tries to call it inside. The dog withdraws, leaving him alone once more.

Realizing he must not be deaf after all, and emboldened by the absence of Martian sounds, the narrator musters the courage to look outside. Crawling through the hole, he emerges to the top of the pit. Surveying the landscape in all directions, he sees no trace of the Martians or their machines—only the wreckage of burned forests, ruined houses, and the insidious red weed, swaying gently in the breeze. Breathing deeply, he revels in the sweetness of the air, a stark contrast to the oppressive days spent in hiding.

Chapter 6: The Work of Fifteen Days

As the narrator surveys the altered landscape, he compares his situation to that of a rabbit whose burrow has been destroyed by builders excavating for a new structure. For the first time, he truly senses that humanity has been dethroned as the master of the earth.

His reverie is interrupted by pangs of extreme hunger, and he sets off through the often neck-deep growth of the red weed in search of food. Scavenging nearby gardens, he finds some young vegetation and, later, wild mushrooms, but these small morsels only deepen his hunger.

The narrator comes across a strangely placed sheet of flowing water and realizes that the rapid growth of the red weed has redirected the waterways. Exploding exponentially on contact with water, the weed has choked out major streams and rivers, overtaking bridges and altering the landscape entirely. He reflects that, despite its overwhelming spread, the weed’s eventual demise was sudden—it succumbed to a bacterial disease, unable to resist terrestrial microbes.

Desperate for sustenance, he drinks from the redirected water and nibbles on the red weed but finds its metallic taste unpleasant. As he travels, he sees no other living humans, only skeletons picked clean by birds. His desperation leads him to chew on animal bones he finds in the woods, but this provides no real nourishment.

Finally, he stumbles upon a garden with enough young potatoes to forestall his hunger. As he eats, he looks around at the deserted ruins and listens to the oppressive silence, convinced he is the sole survivor of the invasion. He imagines the Martians have completed their extermination in England and moved on to other parts of the continent.

Chapter 7: The Man on Putney Hill

The narrator breaks into an inn on Putney Hill, sleeping in a bed for the first time since the fighting began. Though the inn has been ransacked, he finds enough biscuits to fill his belly and his pockets.

That night, he lies awake, haunted by thoughts of the curate’s death, the Martians’ whereabouts, and his wife’s fate. He prays intensely, hoping her death, if it occurred, was swift and painless.

In the morning, he sets off again toward Leatherhead, though now doubting he’ll find his wife there. On the way, he discovers a patch of undisturbed woods, teeming with wildlife—the first sign of thriving life he’s seen in some time. There, he encounters another living human for the first time since his imprisonment.

The man warns the narrator to move along, claiming the area for himself as there’s only enough food for one. The narrator, intending to continue toward Leatherhead, agrees. At this, the man recognizes him—it is the Artilleryman he was separated from in Weybridge! Overjoyed to meet a familiar face, they share their experiences.

The artilleryman reveals that the Martians have established a camp across London, their lights visible at night. He also believes, based on lights he saw in the sky, that the Martians have now built flying machines. This revelation crushes the narrator, as he realizes humanity stands no chance if the Martians can spread worldwide. Despite his natural optimism, the artilleryman’s certainty that humanity as they know it is over convinces him.

The artilleryman recounts a story he heard about the people left in London. After repairing a streetlight, they celebrated by dancing and drinking until dawn, unaware a Martian tripod was watching. By morning, the tripod had snatched nearly a hundred drunken revelers, too incapacitated to escape.

Season in the ways of war, the artilleryman claims to have devised a grand plan: humanity will survive by creating a new underground society in London’s tunnels. Enthralled by the detailed vision, the narrator resolves to help and follows the artilleryman to an abandoned house where he has begun digging a tunnel.

However, the gap between the artilleryman’s grandiose schemes and his actual abilities quickly becomes evident. In a week, he has done less than a day’s work. They work briefly in the morning before the artilleryman insists on stopping early to eat, drink champagne, smoke cigars, and play games. By the end of the day, the narrator realizes the artilleryman’s plans are nothing more than empty fantasies.

Disillusioned and frustrated, the narrator resolves to leave the artilleryman to his machinations. He decides to head into London in hopes of finding news as to what the Martians and the remainder of humanity are doing.

Chapter 8: Dead London

The narrator journeys toward London, navigating through black dust and the lifeless remains of humanity. The only living person he encounters is a hostile drunk man. London itself is eerily intact—undamaged in many places, with spots free of black powder looking deceptively normal, as if on a sleepy Sunday morning. Yet the stillness is oppressive, broken only by unsettling sights like a woman slumped on a doorstep, wrist slashed with a broken champagne bottle.

The silence is finally broken by a repetitive, undulating howl. The narrator follows the haunting sound, encountering more disturbing scenes along the way, including a horse skeleton picked clean by scavengers. Weak with hunger and exhaustion, he breaks into a public house for food, drink, and rest.

He wakes at dusk, the howling sound still echoing through the city. Determined to find its source, he pushes on, eventually arriving at Regent’s Park. There, in the fading light, he sees a massive Martian machine standing motionless, emitting the eerie sound.

Continuing his trek through London, he stumbles upon a wrecked handling machine. Inside are the remnants of a dead Martian, its carcass scavenged by dogs. Not far away, he spots a second giant tripod, also standing silent and still.

When the howling suddenly stops, the narrator is overcome with dread. The noise, though ominous, had been his only companion in the deadly silence. Now terrified, he runs blindly through the night until finding shelter to wait for dawn.

With dawn comes renewed courage, and he resumes his journey. Nearing Primrose Hill, he sees on the summit a third giant tripod, towering over the landscape but entirely still. Overcome by despair, he feels a sudden urge to end it all and rushes toward the machine. But as he approaches, he notices birds circling the hood, pecking at shreds of brown tentacle hanging from its sides.

Scrambling to the edge of their massive pit, he discovers the truth: the Martians’ entire operation has stopped. Their machines are motionless, and the Martians themselves lay dead, their bodies succumbing to terrestrial bacteria, against which they had no defenses.

The narrator weeps with gratitude, overwhelmed by the realization that the torment is over. The earth will recover, and humanity will heal and rebuild.

Chapter 9: Wreckage

The narrator remembers nothing of the next three days, spent wandering in isolation and delirium. He later learns that he was not the first to discover the Martians’ demise; the news was already spreading even as he stood weeping on Primrose Hill.

In a haze, he wandered, wept, and nonsensically sang, “the last man left alive, hurrah,” until he was found and taken in by a kindly household. When his coherence returns on the third day, they share the devastating news that Leatherhead was completely destroyed. He remains with them for four more days, recuperating. They try to dissuade him from his morbid determination to visit the ruins of his former life, but he cannot resist the pull and sets out for his little house in Woking.

As he travels, he is surprised to see the streets already bustling with returning people, some shops reopening, and food aid arriving from overseas. Free trains are running out of Waterloo to help people return home, and the first newspaper has been published, though it is mostly blank. The only surprising news to him is that humanity has discovered “the secret of flying.”

On the train ride home, he surveys the decimated landscape—patches of black dust, burned forests, ruined houses, and tangled red weed. Walking from the station to his house, he revisits several sites from his harrowing journey. Hidden in a thicket of red weed, he finds the overturned cart and the gnawed, dismembered skeleton of the horse he had borrowed from the Spotted Dog. The landlord’s body, he finds, has already been buried.

His hope diminishes as he approaches his house, its door forced open but otherwise untouched since he and the artilleryman had left it. A full search confirms his devastation. He realizes how foolish his faint hope had been.

Suddenly, a voice from outside echoes his despair: “It’s no use… no one has been here… do not torment yourself… no one escaped but you.” Stunned, he steps outside to find his cousin talking to his wife. Elated, he stumbles into her arms. She had insisted on coming. She knew.

(No matter how many times I read this part, it never fails to make me cry.)

Chapter 10: The Epilogue

The epilogue reflects on the aftermath of the Martian invasion and the profound lessons humanity learned. Life slowly returns to normal as survivors rebuild their homes and society begins to recover. The narrator marvels at humanity’s resilience but remains haunted by the horrors he witnessed.

The Martians’ defeat, so sudden and unexpected, came not from humanity’s strength but from terrestrial bacteria—tiny organisms to which humans had long since adapted but the Martians had no defense against. The narrator reflects on the humbling reminder that humanity is not guaranteed dominance over the earth. The invasion revealed how fragile that dominance truly is.

Personally, the narrator grapples with lingering trauma, struggling to reconcile the destruction and suffering with his gratitude for survival. Though happily reunited with his wife, he admits to a persistent sense of unease, often dreaming of the Martians’ machines and their haunting cry.

Looking to the future, the narrator speculates on what might come next. He wonders whether humanity will face another invasion, perhaps from Mars or elsewhere. Alternatively, he imagines a future where humanity ventures into space, this time as the invader.

• Table of Contents
• Book 1: Chapter Summaries