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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How do the villagers react to the narrator's story when he runs into the village after the heat ray?

2. How does the narrator react when he reads an article about the cylinder at the end of Chapter 2?

3. Where does the soldier hide until meeting the narrator?

4. How often does the narrator say new cylinders are falling just before he meets the curate?

5. What is Mars the god of in Roman mythology?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the significance of the artilleryman's story?

2. How does the narrator's brother respond when he hears rumors that food supplies may soon arrive? What does this reveal about him?

3. What does the Thunder Child do to the Martian tripods? How does this change the story?

4. Why are the milkman and the train reassuring to the narrator after the first heat-ray?

5. As the narrator walks from the ruined house toward London, what does he see, and how does this affect his attitude?

6. How does the narrator describe the Martian's internal anatomy?

7. What do people think is in the cylinder when they first gather on the common? Why do you think this is so?

8. When the curate and the narrator are first trapped in the ruined house, how does their conflict begin to intensify?

9. How does the Martian invasion begin and how do people generally react?

10. How does the narrator's brother initially feel about the narrator's safety, and why?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Do you think the ending of War of Worlds iseffective? Why or why not?

Essay Topic 2

Why do you think the author chooses not to give the narrator a name? What effect does this have on the story?

Essay Topic 3

What purposes does the narrator's brother serve as a character?

(see the answer keys)

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