Summary Of H. G. Wells War Of The Worlds

Did all of America really panic? War of the Worlds is a novel published in 1898 by H.G. Wells. Orson Welles later read the novel on the radio adapted as a play in 1998. Many Americans reacted to the broadcast by panicking, even though most hadn’t. H.G. Wells published War of the Wars in 1898, the novel is about Martians invading our home planet, Earth. The book takes place in a small quiet town in London, England when the Martians come to Earth. The beginning of the book gives of an ominous warning while also giving a tiny ray of hope, “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own.” (Wallo). Before,

From his observation he sees that it is a strange cylinder and assumes it has come from Mars due to his sighting of the light. The Martians begin the end to humanity, destroying everything. Strange red weeds begin to cover everything, clogging all the rivers and ending all food supplies. The mysterious red weeds eventually start to die, showing signs of the Martians defeat. Martians are soon defeated by an earthly bacteria (Gillespie). During the golden age of radio, Sunday was the prime-time for America (Welles). On October 30, 1938 at 8 p.m. Orson Welles adapted the H.G. Wells’ novel into a play and is read on the radio at Mercury Theater. He converted the small London town in the book to Grovers’ Mill, New Jersey to make the play more realistic for the listeners (Jeymour-Smith). During the golden age of radio, Sunday was the prime-time for America. It was not a planned radio hoax, Welles had

It’s estimated that there had more than two-thousand calls to the New York headquarters with a span of fifteen minutes. The New York Times switchboard showed to have eight-hundred seventy-five calls, they also had reports of traffics jams. Many of the calls that were made by family to check on relatives (Potter). Though America did panic, only a small majority actually had. The night of the broadcast the supposed panic was very small and practically immeasurable. The C.E. Hooper ratings service telephoned five-thousand households the night of the broadcast for its national ratings survey. Respondents were asked “To what program are you listening?”, only two percent of the respondents had said the Orson Welles’ broadcast. The other ninety-eight percent surveyed had been listening to a different program or hadn’t been listening to the radio at all on October 30, 1938. It doesn’t include all the households who didn’t have a radio to listen to or a phone to be surveyed. One of the main reasons why many people hadn’t been listening to the Welles’ program was because it was scheduled the same time as ventriloquist, Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn Hour, a comedy-variety. The Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn Hour was one of the most popular shows at the time making it hard to compete (Pooley). Some people turned from NBC to CBS at 8:12 p.m. only because the comedy sketch had ended