Introduction
Teaching the era which begins with H.G. Wells' writing of The War of the Worlds in 1898 has been challenging to me, and it satisfies my need to produce a unit which teaches various types of media. It is important to me to enable my eighth graders to piece together a working concept of how an artist's personal life and his/her society propel him to write an original work as famous as The War of the Worlds which would later be adapted into radio, film, and abridged book versions. We will look carefully at the twentieth century's changing political and social arenas through these versions of a compelling story. My students will work on the pressing questions that arise with a burgeoning film industry in America over that century, the world's first film having been released shortly before Wells' text. Does film educate? Does it present a true reality or a false reality that may actually miseducate? How do we, as viewers, determine validity? We will read, research, watch, study, and discuss The War of the Worlds and its adaptations for a nine week quarter.
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