The Undying Fire

Read Time:4 Minute, 40 Second

Last night I finished…

The Undying Fire (1919) by H. G. Wells. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

My copy was a library book that came out of Alma White College Library in Zarephath New Jersey. Pictured below, we see a lovely bookplate, that bears the name Elisabeth Wadsworth Coffin. The banner at the top reads in Latin, “Extant Rectè Factis Præmia”, translating to “There are rewards for doing things right”. The banner in the bottom image reads in Latin “Aquila Non Captat Muscas”, which translates to “The Eagle does not catch flies.” This is the centuries old equivalent of today’s “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

There is a name written in pen under the Date Due sticker (not shown) in the back of the book that looks like it says Sara W. Garrelson. I put this in italics because the first letter of her last name is a little strangely formed. It could be a G, a Q, an S, or a C, so we could be looking at Garrelson, Qarrelson, Sarrelson, or even Carrelson! I’m thinking this is a relative to Elisabeth, based on the fact that it is clearly a W. that Sara puts as the middle initial.

This is the first Wells book that I have read, though I have listened to an audio version of The Time Machine and am familiar with the famous radio adaptation of War of the Worlds. These titles are what the wider public imagines when they hear the name of H. G. Wells. They are sci-fi titles, very outlandish, futuristic stories that have to do with aliens and other worlds.

Such is not the case with The Undying Fire. Wells wrote a number of religious philosophical books, and this is one of them. The book is a retelling of the story of Job for a modern 1919 audience. In the beginning, Satan and God agree to do another Job experiment, and they pick Job Huss, a schoolmaster. Yes, his name is actually Job in this retelling of the Job story. A series of disasters happen to Job such as a fire at the school that kills two kids, a disaster in a lab that injures a teacher, his solicitor commits suicide after bad investments with Job’s money, and, closest to home than any of the others, his son who is in the war was shot down and killed. Now Job is left poor and childless, and his wife is distant and selfish due to all these changes. On top of this, Job has been experiencing a pain in his body that turns out to be a tumor that needs to be operated on.

Job finds a doctor, Elihu Barrack (Elihu in The Book of Job) and arranges the operation to be done at the meager apartment lodgings that he has been living in since he lost all his money. At this point, three of his colleagues, also plays on the names of the speakers in Job, come to his room on the day of his operation to tell him that they want him to resign from the school which has been his life’s work for decades, and all he has left. These three visitors are William Dad (Bildad), Joseph Farr (Zophar) and Eliphaz Burrows (Eliphaz).

This conversation somehow commences in long speeches between the characters into over 100 pages about the existence of God and in what way they believe God exists. Job uses a long illustration involving a U-Boat in one of his speeches, which is very detailed. Most of the content of the book is this scene of the visitors, and I think it would have gone on forever if it were not interrupted by the arrival of the surgeon who is to do the procedure.

When he goes under, Job meets God and they have a conversation. Job discovers that courage is the undying fire in man, and as long as courage endures, everything will turn out fine. When he wakes up, all that has been taken away from him has been restored, including his health and his son, who was not actually killed in the war and was found alive as a prisoner.

When this was published and written, it was the end of the Great War. The people had seen terrible and horrifying things in the previous four years, and these sobering thoughts must have been very much on the minds of people. Death was all around them, and the idea of an afterlife in the aftermath of the destruction of the war must have been an essential thought, especially in that time. In this context, it makes it even more real to imagine what they must have gone through, the loss of love ones, and realizing what kind of harsh reality they must have undergone even when reading the newspapers.

This book has some interesting thoughts in it, though most of it is dialogue. Like huge paragraphs, walls of text dialogue that make you wonder how they even got into this conversation in the first place. I give this 4 stars, anyway. I would recommend this if you are interested in branching out into Wells’ other genres of writing.

Herbert George Wells was the author of many books and short stories, and lived to be 79 years old. He died one hour from his birthplace a little more than a month shy of his 80th birthday (September 21, 1866- August 13, 1946). He was known alongside with Jules Verne, as one of the creators of science fiction.

Read The Undying Fire here at gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61547