The Star: H.G. Wells

This was a very short story about Earth's near miss of natural destruction. A star is noticed hurling toward the Earth. The common class remarks on how it gets brighter and brighter, while the educated comment on how it is getting nearer and nearer. A mathematician notes that it is on course to hit the earth and were he to trade in his knowledge to not be destroyed, he would still choose knowledge. There is a small stir, but then 9 out of 10 people go back about their lives. The glaciers melt and flood cities, many die and the end of mankind seems inevitable. Then the moon eclipses around the earth and saves the Earth from being struck by the star that vears to the sun. Mankind survives and rebuilds much to the surprise of those aliens watching on Mars. Wells used the narrative style and word choice of "The Star" to further the idea that nature has its own plan and man is insignificant in that scheme. The narrative style of the work is third-person omniscient, where the narrator is all-knowing. We are lead to believe the narrator is God from the first sentence “It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made”. According to the seven days of creation, it was on the first day that God created night and day. It was deliberate that Wells chose the Star, instead of an asteroid, which will illuminate night into day. The narrative unemotionally states that most humans do not understand the impact this star could have on life and after a few days the panic fades. Earth seems destined to be destroyed until in India “men cried to God”. Only then does the story shift as if in answer. “Out of the East with a strange inexplicable swiftness sprang the sun…star, sun and moon rushed together across the heavens.” The word choice here creates the idea of a supernatural intervention; instant, unexplainable, and heavenly. God created the sun, moon, and stars on the same day, it is proper they would come together again at the end. Earth is spared and the Martians exclaim “Considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung through our solar system…it is astonishing what a little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly, has sustained.” Wells chose the words “missile” and “flung” to create the idea that Nature/God is capable of waging war, which man cannot win. Only the Martians, foils for the humans, seem capable of understanding. Wells points out that we are egocentric by nature, observing natural phenomena through our limited perspective. This may be the first story of its kind warning about what nature could do to us rather than the reverse.