Human complacency and humility — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Human complacency and humility
Themes
What you need to know
How Wells explores humanity's complacency and vanity before the invasion, and the humbler, wider view of mankind's place in the universe that it leaves behind across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: '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', 'Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity', 'Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims', 'men could go about their petty concerns as they did', 'it certainly did not make the sensation that an ultimatum to Germany would have done', 'as though no planet Mars existed in the sky', 'The habit of personal security, moreover, is so deeply fixed in the Londoner’s mind', 'I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heel', 'Strange mind of man!', 'it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence', 'it has done much to promote the conception of the commonweal of mankind', 'To them, and not to us, perhaps, is the future ordained'.
Context: Wells's own description of the novel as an attack on human self-satisfaction, and the fin de siècle belief that civilisation leads to decadence, which the Epilogue turns round.
