For my essential question, I chose the question, “Why would contentment be dangerous when in positions of authority?” Many times, people believe that they are good enough when comparing themselves to their peers, when really the reality is that anyone can be surpassed by anyone. Once someone is content where they are at in society, they tend to drift away from their original drive.

One article called, “The Danger of Being Satisfied”, Jim Wolstenholm explains why being satisfied is like walking on a tightrope (Wolstenholm 4). Wolstenholm explains to readers that upon becoming satisfied, oftentimes complacency and pride arises and can cause people to, “… get left behind” (Wolstenholm 7-10). People tend to make more mistakes when in a state of satisfaction or contentment causing a down fall to places where you may not be content. The only way to maintain where you are is to work to maintain,

In a similar way, there are many examples in the novel, The War of the Worlds, that show people losing their place. Similarly, when the Martians first landed, no one really did anything but watch, and by the time they started to do something many people were already dead. When the Martians landed, it possibly would have been a better outcome, and if not, at least they tried to do something about it instead of slacking off.

Not only is complacency a problem, but pride is also another problem that arises from contentment (Wolstenholm 8). Wolstenholm says pride encourages people to focus on their past accomplishments, and not about the future. This causes people to fall behind or drop their place in society. People stop growing and improving and eventually can not maintain where they want to be.

One particular spot in the novel talks about how kids were throwing rocks at the cylinder when it first landed (Wells 11). This symbolizes how people thought they were more powerful than it, and thought that it wouldn’t be an issue, but they were wrong.