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Foreshadowing
Explanation and Analysis—Microorganisms:
Early in the novel, Wells hints at the aliens' eventual death from earthly bacteria. This point suggests that all creatures, no matter how advanced they seem, are vulnerable in their own way. In Book 2, Chapter 2, the narrator mentions that Mars lacks microorganisms, which foreshadows the Martians' eventual downfall:
The last salient point in which the systems of these creatures differed from ours was in what one might have thought a very trivial particular. Micro-organisms, which cause so much disease and pain on earth, have either never appeared upon Mars, or Martian sanitary science eliminated them ages ago. A hundred diseases, all the fevers and contagions of human life, consumption, cancers, tumours and such morbidities, never enter the scheme of their life. And speaking of the differences between the life on Mars and terrestrial life, I may allude here to the curious suggestions of the red weed.
The phrase "what one might have thought a very trivial particular" recalls the novel's first line, in which the narrator states that "no one would have believed" in intelligent extraterrestrial life, let alone an invasion. The narrator often insists that what people believe to be true will turn out to be false. Here, he hints that the absence of such bacteria on Mars is not so "trivial." The Martians, much like the humans, seem to think they are invincible. Both groups are wrong—earth has been invaded, and the Martians die of a basic bacterial infection. What ultimately determines survival is not technological advancement but a biological advantage. The Martians' downfall due to lack of immunity recalls Darwin's Theory of Evolution, as the aliens cannot win the contest of "survival of the fittest" on earth because they lack the necessary immune function. Foreshadowing permits insight into the Martians' eventual demise and emphasizes that the key to survival is a biological advantage.
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