Book One, Chapters 1 to 6: the Martians arrive — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Book One, Chapters 1 to 6: the Martians arrive
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The flashes on Mars seen through Ogilvy's telescope, the falling star on Horsell Common, the crowd at the pit, the cylinder opening and the first sight of a Martian,
the Deputation with its white flag destroyed by the Heat-Ray, and the crush on the Chobham road.
What the opening chapters establish about the narrator, the Martians and the novel's themes, with key quotations.
Key quotations: 'this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s', 'intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes', 'And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment', 'The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one', 'It seemed so safe and tranquil', 'There’s a man in it—men in it!', 'I was overcome with disgust and dread', 'that we too were intelligent', 'It was as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire', 'by the light of their own destruction', 'Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from without, came—fear', 'as blindly as a flock of sheep'.
Structure: a narrator writing 'six years ago now', who knows how the story ends, opens with the Martians' view of Earth before narrowing to one man on Horsell Common.
Context: the light seen on Mars in 1894, Schiaparelli's canali, and the newspapers, telegrams and railways that carry the news from Woking.
OCR's question on this novel is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the novel elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the novel, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts when it is relevant to the question, and 4 marks are for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4). An extract-based answer that never leaves the extract, or a discursive answer built on one moment, cannot go above Level 3. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the question it is for.
