Simpsons Vs Wells

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humorously detailing Springfield’s response to an approaching comet, which threatens to destroy everyone in the town. The episode parallels Wells’s chronicle of the Martian invasion in its depiction of authority. Unwarranted faith finds an unfortunate place in government, religion, and science in both accounts of impending disaster. In themselves, these three fundamental elements of society do not receive criticism. The misguided trust people sometimes place in these institutions, relying on them as unquestioned and unquestionable authorities, receives the brunt of the censure in both works. The townspeople themselves receive their fair share of reproach as well. In both works, the people criticized include not only the general middle- to upper-class communities, but also those responsible for the criticizing.
In The War of Worlds, the government plays a silent role that finds its reflection in the attitudes of the townspeople upon the first arrival of the Martian ...

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faith in the government is further reflected in the people’s confidence in their military superiority over the Martians. Despite the fact that the Martians have successfully traversed the vast distance from their home to earth, trust in the military endures. “The idea people seemed to have here was that the Martians were simply formidable human beings, who might attack and sack the town, to be certainly destroyed in the end” (Wells 67). The narrator himself is guilty of this over-estimation: “‘A shell in the pit,’ said I, ‘if the worst comes to the worst, will kill them all’” (Wells 32). The narrator later echoes this ...

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