A introduction to the novel (7 grades) MYP year 2

1. The war of the
worlds
H.G Wells

2. One day this happened in London,
England

3. One day this happened in London,
England

4. One day this happened in London,
England

5. One day this happened in London,
England

6. One day this happened in London,
England

7. One day this happened in London,
England

8. One day this happened in London,
England

9. Questions
Do you think that this truly happened in
London? Why?
What makes the photopraphs real or fake?
What context or medium could the
photographs be part of?
Do you believe this will ever happen in the
future (again)?

10. This was definitely not real, it was a fiction scenario of
what could have happened out of the imagination and
fear of people, but why? What motives do you think
may lead people to think of this situation?
What do you think was happening in England at that
time? (list three things)
Who do you think might have come up with such idea?
(list three people)

11. Read this passage below:
And all about him – in the rooms below, in the houses on each side and across the
road, and behind in the Park Terraces and in the hundred other streets of that part of
Marylebone, and the Westbourne Park district and St Pancras, and westward and
northward in Kilburn and St John's Wood and Hampstead, and eastward in Shoreditch
and Highbury and Haggerston and Hoxton, and, indeed, through all the vastness of
London from Ealing to East Ham – people were rubbing their eyes ... and dressing
hastily as the first breath of the coming storm of Fear blew through the Streets. It was
the dawn of the great panic. (Book 1, ch.14)
(Listen to the audio)
Can you answer the same questions now?

12. Historical context
Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) astonished the world producing stories, novels,
conjectures, that laid out the emerging field of science fiction: interplanetary
adventure, time travel , genetic engineering. He can be considered as a risk
taker in those times, when the attitude towards science among the 19th century
intelectual elite was one of amusement. The World of the worlds is one of his novels.
(Adapted from https://www.bl.uk)

13. The novel…
Read the opening passage of the novel (in silence). Identify the words that tell you that
war has broken out.
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world
was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as
mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they
were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope
might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With
infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene
in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the
microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources
of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as
impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those
departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars,
perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across
the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that
perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious
eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth
century came the great disillusionment.

14. The text in motion…
The war of the worlds film 2005
What is the World of the worlds about?
Which are the two worlds in the story ?
Are we prepared to face a third world
war of this type?