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 Post subject: What Happened to the Narrator's Wife?
PostPosted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:06 pm 
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Joined: Mon Nov 20, 2006 7:23 pm
Posts: 121
Anyone have any ideas what happened to the Narrator's wife between him dropping her off at Leatherhead and she turning up alive and well at their home after the invasion. The narrator recalls hearing that Leatherhead had been destroyed and everyone presumed killed, but surely all those towns and villages in danger of being attacked would have been evacuated?

Could his wife have somehow survived the attack or left the town to search for him. Perhaps she and the population of Leatherhead may have been evacuated earlier on either to a safer part of the country or abroad?


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 12:43 am 
Tripod King

Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:07 am
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Location: west-central Pennsylvanai
You didn't read the end of the novel very well. It specifically states that both the Narrator's wife AND her cousin survived the destruction of Leatherhead, and that they both turned up at his home the same time he did, to check on any survivors. So we got a heart-warming happy ending.


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:07 pm 
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Joined: Mon Nov 20, 2006 7:23 pm
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Yes I am aware that the Narrator's wife and her cousin survived but I just wondered how they did esspecially when it stated that no-one survived the destruction of the town. Could it be that at first it was presumed everyone was killed and then survivors turned up. Or was it a slip on Wells behalf. Did he intend to kill off the wife originally or was he made to change the ending.

The reason why I'm asking is that an abridged talking books version of WoTW released in 1977 with Robert Hardy reading had a downbeat ending where the wife is killed.

Thanks


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:30 pm 
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Tripod King

Joined: Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:11 pm
Posts: 252
Location: Londoon, UK
morrisvan wrote:
The reason why I'm asking is that an abridged talking books version of WoTW released in 1977 with Robert Hardy reading had a downbeat ending where the wife is killed.

That's interesting, I hadn't heard of that version.

However, both the original Pearson's serialisation and (of course, as you well know!) the novel have her turn up at the end.

I suspect that that was Wells's concession to convention, having her survive. After all, he'd made his point by trashing London and the Home Counties, killing Lord knows how many people, so perhaps he just felt that it would have been too grim to have her die as well.

As for what happened to her within the plot, who can say? Presumably, she and her cousin either left Leatherhead before its destruction - they would have had time (the Narrator says he was told that Leatherhead was wiped out two days after he was trapped with the Curate in the ruined house, which means Leatherhead was destroyed three days after the wife arrived there); or they simply survived it directly - after all, we only have the testimony of the couple who told the Narrator that everyone in Leatherhead was killed; they may simply have been wrong (and why not? South East England was still in chaos, communications would have been fractured and incomplete).

In any case, by making it seem as if she had been killed, Wells added yet another, albeit minor, element of tension to the story.


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PostPosted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 8:36 pm 
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Martian War Lord

Joined: Mon Jan 17, 2005 10:31 pm
Posts: 3365
Location: N.Humberside.UK
morrisvan wrote:
The reason why I'm asking is that an abridged talking books version of WoTW released in 1977 with Robert Hardy reading had a downbeat ending where the wife is killed.

Thanks


I am a big collector of audio books and I have that version read by Robert Hardy, it was abridged for recording by Edward Philips, he was notorious for hacking a story-line to pieces while abridging a book. You may have noticed some other main characters and key events missing, such as the Artilleryman, and (to my amazement) The Thunder Child scene and if I remember correctly the Black Smoke is also missing, the guy was a real butcher with little or no grasp of the important scenes in a story, I think we were lucky he didn't cut out the tripods and the heat ray :a009:


Image
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DldFBFJgWmw&feature=player_embedded


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