How Wells presents The curate, and how the character develops across the text: the frightened clergyman from Weybridge whose faith collapses into panic, selfishness and madness while he is trapped with the narrator, until the narrator strikes him down.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'His face was a fair weakness, his chin retreated', 'What do these things mean?', 'Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done?', 'As if it were Sodom and Gomorrah!', 'The church! We rebuilt it only three years ago', 'The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever!', 'This must be the beginning of the end', 'How can God’s ministers be killed?', 'We are safe here', 'this spoiled child of life thought his weak tears in some way efficacious', 'who face neither God nor man, who face not even themselves', 'There was poverty, sorrow; the poor were trodden in the dust, and I held my peace', 'I preached acceptable folly', 'I must bear my witness!'.
The curate as the narrator's foil: helpless exclamation, greed and despair against the narrator's watchfulness and will to survive.
Context: a curate as a parish priest's assistant, whose church, services and Sunday schools the invasion sweeps away.
