# The War of the Worlds — Character guide

> Key figures in The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.

- [The Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/narrator.md): An unnamed philosophical writer whose cool, cosmic curiosity turns to survival instinct when he becomes an eyewitness to the Martian invasion of southern England.
- [The Martians](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/the_martians.md): Vast, cool, unsympathetic intellects from a dying Mars who cross the gulf of space to claim Earth with heat-rays, poison gas, and towering three-legged machines.
- [The Curate](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/the_curate.md): A terrified clergyman who shares the narrator's hiding place and collapses into religious hysteria as the Martian catastrophe dismantles his faith and reason.
- [Ogilvy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/ogilvy.md): An astronomer who is among the first to confirm the Martian projectiles and rushes to warn the world before the Heat-Ray silences him.
- [Henderson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/henderson.md): A journalist who reports the landing and is killed by the Martians.
- [Stent](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/stent.md): The Astronomer Royal who leads the delegation to the first cylinder and is killed.
- [Miss Elphinstone](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/miss_elphinstone.md): A young woman fleeing the invasion with her panicked sister-in-law, rescued by the narrator's brother as the Martians reach the Essex coast.
- [Lord Hilton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/lord_hilton.md): A local landowner who tries to organize resistance and is killed.
- [Thunder Child](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/thunder_child.md): A British ironclad warship that rams a Martian tripod before being destroyed.
- [The Artilleryman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/the_artilleryman.md): A shaken soldier who survives the Martian rout and later proposes a futile underground resistance scheme to the narrator.
- [The Narrator's Brother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters/the_narrators_brother.md): He is the narrator's younger brother, a student in London when the Martians land, and his chapters follow the city's collapse from the inside — the crush at the railway stations, the looted shops, the roads choked with r

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_war_of_the_worlds_se/characters