Human complacency and humility — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
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: the fin de siècle fear that civilisation was in decline, and the Epilogue's twist that the invasion has removed the 'serene confidence in the future' that breeds decadence.
How the invasion widens the narrator's view: from Woking's petty concerns to the 'commonweal of mankind' and life spreading beyond the Earth.
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.
