The hero did kill the cleric: a foolish mistake
A reader commenting on one of my War of the World essays pointed out a mistake, noting that the main character in the book did indeed kill the cleric in pretty much the same scene as depicted in Steven Spielberg’s movie adaptation.
The reader is right. And this will teach me to rely on memory when writing an essay about a subject I foolishly believe I know something about.
Although I knew the cleric (who is the ambulance driver in Spielberg’s movie) and the main character clashed even to the point of violence, I remembered the more vivid description of the alien machine dragging the cleric off, and had mistakenly believed that had caused his death, not the blow to the head the hero had inflicted on him. A later passage in H.G. Wells’ book, however, deals with the hero’s confession and further evidence that he had caused the death.
My re-reading of several passages in response to the email of my mistake uncovered other details that might be of interest in showing just how authentic Spielberg was in his depiction.
While I believe a significant portion of the ambulance driver’s speech was derived from the Orson Wells play, Orson Wells lifted this speech from one of the concluding chapters of the book.
The stranger the hero of the radio plays meets huddled in a doorway in Newark in the concluding moments of Orson Wells adaptation equate in part to the artillery officer the book’s hero had met at various points in his narrative. Spielberg combined this character with the character of the cleric to shape the ambulance driver in the farm house scene.
Although Wells book has ferry crossing and later conflict in the water in which the hero escapes death by holding his breath as the heat ray scorches the surface, Spielberg seems to have derived at least in part his ferry crossing from the steam ship crossing depicted in the book as the hero’s brother’s escape to Europe, where people are clinging to the sides of the ships as the aliens wade into the water at some distance.
Spielberg and Tom Cruise seem also to have captured the incredible ambivalence Wells described for his hero during the first contact, horrified by the sight of the rising monsters yet attracted, too. Spielberg’s adaptation was particularly adept at translating several other emotionally conflicted passages from the book, including Ray’s conflict with the cleric (ambulance driver) and the limited role red weed played in the over all narrative. While some (like me) would have liked to have seen red weed play a more significant role, Spielberg remained loyal to original, even to the point of showing the hero’s passage through it and the valley red weed had taken over.
I was struck, too, by Spielberg’s loyalty to the collection of humans for consumption and the putting of them into baskets hanging from underneath.
Although eventually, I will do a scene to book comparison of the film, I also noted how loyal Spielberg remained to the stealing of the van scene – although in the book the revolver the hero’s brother acquires at least temporarily saves the day, allowing him to rescue the two women for passage over the English Channel to France.
Spielberg also maintained some strong narrative structure. While the hero’s brother did his best to rescue the women in his charge, the way Ray rescued daughter (and son), the hero in the book was always bent on getting back together with his wife, whom he had sent away early in the book, and like Ray who struggles to get to Boston to his ex-wife, the hero of the book is particularly focused on reaching the place where he had left his wife.
Anyway, my apologies for the mistake about the cleric. I’ve made mistakes before, but none as easily checkable as this one was.