War of the Worlds

The 'War of the Worlds' story has been considered allegorical since it was first released in 1898, as it has been remade and re-interpreted several times. This novel has been remade in times of social or political destruction when society has a big shift. Several universal key themes emerged in this book these were, Paranoia, the fear of others, fear of annihilation and a fear of the unknown. This is because the universal themes of the original novel reflect a time when our society was facing an uncertain future. Each time this story re-emerged the same key themes were present but were aimed towards different fears each time.The 'aliens' in the novel are used as a symbol for the immigrants, the aliens are used because they are disfigured characters who are dehumanised so they can be used in all the remakes as a source which fear is aimed towards.  These fears were based off society in the time the story was released.

When the novel was first released by H.G Wells in 1898, the story was interpreted as an allegory for British imperialism, as this was societies big shift at the time. The theme of Paranoia came from the fear of cultural destruction, fear of immigrants and the 'end of world fears'. Fear of others was shown in the novel because people felt threatened by the influx of foreign nationals. People saw these immigrants as a threat to british culture and cultural ideologies. Because of this people feared immigration, people feared that the British empire would collapse and there would be cultural destruction, this was the theme of fear of annihilation.

The story was remade into a radio drama in 1938 when there was a fear of the Nazi party. This was the basis of the same key themes that were shown in radio drama. The paranoia this time stemmed from the rise of the Nazi party in Germany and Fascism in Europe, which caused people to fear a world war. The Fear of others came from the fear of fascism and Nazi's and the nazis ideological  challenges. People also feared the foreign nations such as Japan, Russia, Germany, Italy etc because of this paranoia of world war. This fear of annihilation was a key theme as people feared World war 2 and the emerge of nuclear technology as numerous threats to US national security were made from Europe.

A film version of War of the world was first made in 1953 just after the Hiroshima nuclear attack occurred. This is what all fear was aimed towards in this film. People were Paranoid of nuclear annihilation , the USSR and communist infiltration. The fear of other was a fear of the USSR backed Communist Global revolution and conflict with Cuba. The aliens in this film represented the communists. The fear of annihilation was due to the fear of nuclear annihilation which stemmed from Hiroshima which was a very real threat, people feared this would be the beginning of world war 3.

The most recent time we have seen War of the words was in 2005 when Spielberg released a movie. At the time this film was released the US had just been a victim of a large scale terrorist attack on the World trade centres. The paranoia in this film was the fear of terror attacks and a war on terror. The fear of 'Aliens' represent the non american nationals. The fear of others was a fear of islamic terrorists and  fear of reprisals from nations at war with USA. People also feared weapons of mass destruction. The fear of annihilation was significant in this film as people feared future terrorist attacks, fear of war and a fear of these aliens which represented Islam.

As you can see this original story can be broken own into the key themes and be put into context with societies cultural and political difficulties in many different ways to paint a picture of how society was at specific times.