Thematic Summary of The Star by H.G. Wells

H.G. Well’s wrote The Star in 1897, but apocalyptic/disaster fiction had already existed for thousands of years. Well, the authors didn’t think they were writing fiction, but nevertheless, they were still writing speculative ‘non-fiction’. A quick Wikipedia look-up on Google will tell you that hundreds of seers have prophesized the end of mankind. Unfortunately, fortunately, they have all been wrong!

Yet, these countless predictions prove a point about our very own human nature: many of us have fetishized the ‘end of the world’. Christians call it the rapture. Vikings called it Ragnarok. Others called it the Apocalypse. All these stories about our eventual end on this earth have a common thread: there is some greater reason for our end to occur – most of the time, it involves the triumph of good over evil.

This is where The Star differs in its narrative. Instead of focusing on some grand narrative of good gods achieving a final victory over the forces of evil, it sticks to describing the end of the world with surgical precision. Wells methodically gives the reader a play-by-play of the end of the world with an almost apathetic disposition. He talks of a “growing tidal wave… a wall of water, fifty feet high, roaring hungrily, upon the long coasts of Asia… millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky...” – never dwelling on any particular person or group of people. Eventually he ends a paragraph of descriptive terms with a curt phrase: “and then death.” His writing style evokes a notion of inevitability – not dwelling on any personal story shrinks the role of any and all humans. By switching swiftly from human reaction to description of pending doom, he elucidates the escalating speed of which death comes to the people in The Star. There is hardly any time for any sustained emotions in his characters and sympathy from the readers.

The story begins with news of an incoming spectacle: an “unprecedented kind” of planetary collision involving Neptune and an ominous ‘star’. Miniscule at first, it swiftly grows in size – it catches the attention of thousands by the third day of discovery. As the masses marveled, Wells writes the death of Neptune, “far greater than our earth, indeed, that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death”. An entire planet, extinguish in moments – humankind views this as a spectacle, not knowing the effect this very Star will have on them.

The Star gets brighter. In typical human, solipsistic fashion, a weeping woman laments “what is a new star to me?” as she kneels “beside her dead”. Two lovers whisper to one another, “That is our star”. Though some reach the conclusion that “Man has lived in vain”, a large majority of humans choose not to believe the impending doom, insisting that humans had nothing to fear. Most are assured in humanity’s guaranteed survival – after all, the Star was still so very far away…

In a blink the Star became blinding to look at, the winds blew hot, the weather turbulent, the water levels increasing at an awful steadiness. The “laughter ceased”. A few paragraphs later, Wells writes the end of the world as we know. Most humans perish, but a minority find subsistence “towards the poles of the earth”.

Wells caps this tale off by writing from the point of view of astronomers on Mars. The Martians fail to recognize the irreparable damage the Star has had on humankind, because the geography of earth has mostly remained “intact”. Wells links this observation to the inconsequential nature of humankind’s inevitable end, as even the “vastest of human catastrophes” may seem small “at a distance of a few million miles.”

And that is what is Well’s main message – mankind’s futility in the face of its potential end. We have found ourselves in a “vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination”, our existence being absolutely dwarfed by time and space. Yet, we (or at least most of us) would never resign to nihilism. Our innate natures compel us to find more comforting reasons for the nature of our existence. In The Star, man reacts to a supernatural event the same ways it always has: through science and superstition. Wells writes of a “master mathematician” who discovers the true danger of the Star in the sky. He goes on to give his students a lecture on the inevitable disaster awaiting mankind. Wells does not describe his story any further. In its place, he goes to describe people that are summoned by “the tolling of the bells” to go the churches to gather and pray. Yet another coping mechanism for the people was wilful ignorance. Rather than fearing death, people choose to reduce its significance, effectively ignoring it after it had captured their attention for a few days.

Neither of these methods to cope with our end matter in the end. In his narrative, Wells focuses not on mankind in his final few paragraphs, but on describing the absolutely brutal way in which the world is physically affected by the passing Star. In intricate detail, he writes of the earth’s destruction: “And then star, sun and moon rushed together across the heavens…star and sun merged into one glare of flame at the zenith of the sky. The moon…but was lost to sight in the brilliance of the sky…the thunder and lightning wove a garment round the world….” Wells writes of the unmitigated chaos, but in a hauntingly beautiful manner.

And once again, through the entire incident, mankind’s role is insignificant. Man, infinitesimal in the grand scheme of the universe, will have no say in its end. If and when disaster strikes, it wouldn’t matter whether or not we turn to science, superstition, or ignorance, our collective end will still be assured. Whether or not the earth ends with a bang or a whimper does not matter. Its end would have been inevitable either way: entirely out of our hands.