Our narrator finds himself confined not only by walls but also by the crippling presence of his companion, the curate, whose fraying sanity mirrors the breakdown of society outside. As the Martian tripods cast their ominous shadow over the remnants of mankind, the two characters' clashing personalities and coping mechanisms underscore a microcosm of human fragility and resilience in the face of an existential threat. Our narrator gets a fraught but unique view into the Martians constructing their apparatus which would be used to supress life on earth. He watches with morbid fascination, risking discovery for glimpses into their astonishing alien technology, and in horror, discovers what they intend to do with humans.