The Invisible Man (Novel)

I believe I read H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man when I was a kid, but I've read it again and got quite a kick out of it. It's not exactly brilliant prose, but it's fun to read and has a great mad scientist at its center.

The novel was published in 1897, and, as with Wells previous two novels, The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau, there is a sense of the arrogance of science. In this novel, the character of Griffin (his name is not know until near the end) is an out and out psychopath, but it is not clear whether this is a by-product of his experiments or whether he was that way to begin with.

The book begins with a memorable scene, especially as depicted in the 1933 film version (I'll be discussing the Universal films in the series in the coming weeks). A stranger, wearing a heavy overcoat and gloves, a wide-brimmed hat, oversized dark goggles, and his head wrapped in bandages, arrives at an inn in a small Sussex town in the middle of a snowstorm. He takes a room, and arranges for his luggage, suitcases full of bottles, to be shipped there. He is nasty and short-tempered, but is left largely alone to his experiments. Eventually it will be revealed that he hides behind these clothes because he is invisible, which causes much consternation of the residents of the town, who are something of an English version of the citizens of Mayberry.

Griffin has made himself invisible by making his body unable to absorb light, but he can't reverse the process. "'I could be invisible!'" I repeated. "To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man--the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none.'" But there are drawbacks, as Griffin discovers. Foremost, in order to be invisible, he must be naked, and then he runs out of money. After robbing a vicar, the townspeople discover his secret and he flees, enlisting a drunkard as his accomplice, and then tracking down his colleague from medical school, who listens to how he made the discovery and his plans for world domination. He is betrayed, and comes back to this man's house to kill him.

The last section of the book is pretty exciting, and though Wells mentions how Griffin knows he can be captured and stopped--the use of bloodhounds, or throwing some kind of liquid on him (this will be used in future films), Griffin manages to outwit his bumbling pursuers until he is apprehended and killed, his body once again becoming visible.

Wells was a man of opinions and philosophy, but this book is more of an entertainment, a page-turner with dry humor. For instance, "'The fact is, I'm all here--heads, hands, legs, and all the rest of it, but it happens I'm invisible. It's a confounded nuisance, but I am. That's no reason why I should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in Iping, is it?'"

One thing in the book that is not in the film is that Griffin is an albino, who already has no pigment in his skin. It would be interesting to know what kind of stigma that was in 1897. Otherwise, there is really no sympathy for Griffin. The reader hopes for his capture fairly early on, though it's amusing to read how he manages to stay at large so long.

Certainly Wells would have no idea how this character, and its many reincarnations, would become a standard theme in science fiction. The lure of invisibility is almost as prevalent as the ability to fly or travel in time.