H. G. Wells often used his science fiction tales to teach a moral lesson. In The Invisible Man, he warns against the abuse of scientific capability and the misuse of power it encourages. The protagonist, Griffin, was driven to find a potion that would make flesh and bone invisible. He tried it on himself, and it proved successful.

When the novel opens, the Invisible Man enters an inn as a mysterious stranger, swaddled in clothing with bandages around his face and wearing glasses to hide his condition. The fact that the season is winter signals the reader that death will become important to the story. As the stranger mutters to himself, the reader understands the isolation he suffers, but he is in no way a sympathetic character, frightening the other visitors at the inn and behaving rudely toward the landlady.

He moves his scientific equipment into the room he rents in order to continue experimenting, but soon becomes focused on his newfound power as a manner by which to wreak havoc and injury on others. Individuals hear noises, but can find no cause; they close a door, then walk back to find it open again. This trickery proves harmless enough, but it whets Griffin’s appetite for power.

Soon he is a hunted man and is wounded by a group of pursuers. He takes refuge in the home of Doctor Kemp, identifying himself by name for the first time in the story, reminding Kemp they had been in school together. The Invisible Man jolts Kemp’s memory by describing himself as “a younger student, almost an albino, six feet high, and broad, with a pink and white face and red eyes,—who won the medal for chemistry.”

Griffin’s appearance would have marked him as aberrant, one who would never fit into a group due to his odd appearance. Ironically, his disappearance into invisibility, like the ghost form he already resembled, does not change his role as an “other” in society. The winning of the medal suggests his mental acuity and creative vision, but his lack of humanity mitigates against such natural talents to render him undeserving of admiration.

He represents the classic mad-scientist character that Wells used repeatedly in stories to make clear that a desire for metaphysical powers equates to a madness born in a lack of self-control. Wells suggests Griffin’s monstrosity through his strange appearance, and the character seems almost destined to complete his transformation into something inhuman.

Kemp allows Griffin to stay in his house, then reads an article describing the manner in which a village had been terrorized and recognizes that Griffin is losing his faculty of reason. As the action rises, Griffin becomes more agitated and further loses a grip on reality, assuming that Kemp will join his scheme to terrorize the world.

When he discovers that Kemp has betrayed his whereabouts, he rushes from the house in “a blindury,” bumping into a child and breaking the child’s ankle. Furious with Kemp, he writes a letter stating that “the Epoch of the Invisible Man” has begun, and his first official act will be to execute Kemp. Now a complete homicidal maniac, Griffin does attempt to kill Kemp and in the process injures several additional people.

At last tackled to the ground by a crowd who comes to Kemp’s aid, his chest is crushed, and his body loses its invisibility, revealing his sickly white skin and “garnet” eyes.

Like other of Wells’s novels, The Invisible Man was converted to multiple film versions, with critics pronouncing the 1933 movie starring Claude Rains as the superior presentation.

Bibliography
Gill, Stephen. Scientific Romances of H. G. Wells: A Critical Study. Cornwall, Ontario: Vesta, 1975.
West, Anthony. Introduction to The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells. New York: Bantam Books, 1987, vii–xvi.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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