Although humanity survives the War of the Worlds, the ending of HG Wells' novel is not at all reassuring. Although there seem to be some positive effects such as advances in science, the Martian invasion obviously also has its negative effects: it seems to cause some sort of mental illness in the narrator, and probably in many other humans as well. Furthermore, the narrator talks about the likelihood of another invasion, if not from Mars at least from other planets. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One reason the novel's ending is not reassuring is that the invasion appears to leave many humans with some sort of mental illness, probably post-traumatic stress disorder. The narrator tells us in the epilogue that occasionally, when he writes in his study, he "sees the healing valley below writhing in flames, and feels the house behind and around him empty and desolate." . Since this is in the epilogue, we know that the Martians are dead, so these must be hallucinations. The fact that he imagines the house "empty and desolate" shows that the Martians left behind a kind of sadness that remains so strongly imprinted that the narrator keeps it rooted in his subconscious. We must not forget that there are also some positive effects. The narrator says that "the gifts he brought to human science are enormous", which is, of course, very reassuring, especially in the eyes of H. G. Wells, since he was a keen biologist. But a more important reassuring effect would be the narrator's description of how they might deal with a future invasion by Martians. He suggests that "the cylinder could be destroyed by dynamite... or they could be massacred with guns as soon as the screw opens." This is very reassuring because we know that humans will be more cautious now, rather than making the stupid mistakes they made the first time. However, even in this sentence where the narrator attempts to reassure the reader, there is still the hint of a worrying effect: the word 'slaughtered'. It gives the reader the feeling that humans have become crueler due to the Martian invasion and that it will remain that way. Wells makes this clear when he says that "there will certainly be no relaxation for many years yet." Here Wells uses anastrophe to emphasize the fact that humans will remain cruel "for many years." This phrase is placed at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis. However, some argue that this is a positive effect of the invasion because the Martians deserve our cruelty and we are safer that way. To heighten this sense of anxiety, the narrator talks about the Martians landing on the planet Venus. ' This tells the reader that even though it is over for humans, it is not over for Venus and in fact it is not over for any other planet in the universe. We know that Wells wants the reader to infer this because in the first chapter he compares us to "infusoria under the microscope" and to Martians as man observing us. But there are things much larger than men, and there are planets much larger than Mars: it is clear that in this analogy there is still room for other planets in the universe, indiscernible far from Earth, to be involved in various other wars. If Wells had simply wanted a novel about the war between Earth and Mars, he probably would have called it "The Woking War", but we know that it is about something more because the novel is called "The War of the Worlds", indicating that there they are clearly more than one world. Once again, all this contributes to making the end of the novel not reassuring. One final point to add is that the last chapter mimics the first; both start with one.