'The Invisible Man' sets for March 2020 release The film, a Universal-Blumhouse production, is based on the classic 1897 sci-fi novel by HG Wells. Share Via Email.
The narrator begins tellinghis story with the claim that he is an “invisible man.” His invisibility,he says, is not a physical condition—he is not literally invisible—butis rather the result of the refusal of others to see him. He saysthat because of his invisibility, he has been hiding from the world,living underground and stealing electricity from the MonopolatedLight & Power Company. He burns 1,369 light bulbssimultaneously and listens to Louis Armstrong’s “(What Did I Doto Be So) Black and Blue” on a phonograph. He says that he has goneunderground in order to write the story of his life and invisibility.
As a young man, in the late 1920sor early 1930s, the narrator livedin the South. Because he is a gifted public speaker, he is invitedto give a speech to a group of important white men in his town.The men reward him with a briefcase containing a scholarship toa prestigious black college, but only after humiliating him by forcinghim to fight in a “battle royal” in which he is pitted against otheryoung black men, all blindfolded, in a boxing ring. After the battleroyal, the white men force the youths to scramble over an electrifiedrug in order to snatch at fake gold coins. The narrator has a dreamthat night in which he imagines that his scholarship is actuallya piece of paper reading “To Whom It May Concern . . . Keep ThisNigger-Boy Running.”
Three years later, the narrator is a student at the college.He is asked to drive a wealthy white trustee of the college, Mr.Norton, around the campus. Norton talks incessantly about his daughter, thenshows an undue interest in the narrative of Jim Trueblood, a poor,uneducated black man who impregnated his own daughter. After hearingthis story, Norton needs a drink, and the narrator takes him tothe Golden Day, a saloon and brothel that normally serves blackmen. A fight breaks out among a group of mentally imbalanced blackveterans at the bar, and Norton passes out during the chaos. Heis tended by one of the veterans, who claims to be a doctor andwho taunts both Norton and the narrator for their blindness regardingrace relations.
Back at the college, the narrator listens to a long, impassioned sermonby the Reverend Homer A. Barbee on the subject of the college’sFounder, whom the blind Barbee glorifies with poetic language. Afterthe sermon, the narrator is chastised by the college president, Dr.Bledsoe, who has learned of the narrator’s misadventures with Nortonat the old slave quarters and the Golden Day. Bledsoe rebukes thenarrator, saying that he should have shown the white man an idealizedversion of black life. He expels the narrator, giving him sevenletters of recommendation addressed to the college’s white trusteesin New York City, and sends him there in search of a job.
The narrator travels to the bright lights and bustle of 1930sHarlem, where he looks unsuccessfully for work. The letters of recommendationare of no help. At last, the narrator goes to the office of oneof his letters’ addressees, a trustee named Mr. Emerson. There hemeets Emerson’s son, who opens the letter and tells the narrator thathe has been betrayed: the letters from Bledsoe actually portray thenarrator as dishonorable and unreliable. The young Emerson helpsthe narrator to get a low-paying job at the Liberty Paints plant, whosetrademark color is “Optic White.” The narrator briefly serves asan assistant to Lucius Brockway, the black man who makes this whitepaint, but Brockway suspects him of joining in union activitiesand turns on him. The two men fight, neglecting the paint-making;consequently, one of the unattended tanks explodes, and the narratoris knocked unconscious.
The narrator wakes in the paint factory’s hospital, havingtemporarily lost his memory and ability to speak. The white doctorsseize the arrival of their unidentified black patient as anopportunity to conduct electric shock experiments. After the narratorrecovers his memory and leaves the hospital, he collapses on thestreet. Some black community members take him to the home of Mary,a kind woman who lets him live with her for free in Harlem and nurtureshis sense of black heritage. One day, the narrator witnesses the evictionof an elderly black couple from their Harlem apartment. Standingbefore the crowd of people gathered before the apartment, he givesan impassioned speech against the eviction. Brother Jack overhearshis speech and offers him a position as a spokesman for the Brotherhood,a political organization that allegedly works to help the sociallyoppressed. After initially rejecting the offer, the narrator takesthe job in order to pay Mary back for her hospitality. But the Brotherhooddemands that the narrator take a new name, break with his past,and move to a new apartment. The narrator is inducted into the Brotherhoodat a party at the Chthonian Hotel and is placed in charge of advancingthe group’s goals in Harlem.
After being trained in rhetoric by a white member of thegroup named Brother Hambro, the narrator goes to his assigned branchin Harlem, where he meets the handsome, intelligent black youth leaderTod Clifton. He also becomes familiar with the black nationalistleader Ras the Exhorter, who opposes the interracial Brotherhoodand believes that black Americans should fight for their rights overand against all whites. The narrator delivers speeches and becomesa high-profile figure in the Brotherhood, and he enjoys his work.One day, however, he receives an anonymous note warning him to rememberhis place as a black man in the Brotherhood. Not long after, theblack Brotherhood member Brother Wrestrum accuses the narrator oftrying to use the Brotherhood to advance a selfish desire for personaldistinction. While a committee of the Brotherhood investigates thecharges, the organization moves the narrator to another post, asan advocate of women’s rights. After giving a speech one evening,he is seduced by one of the white women at the gathering, who attemptsto use him to play out her sexual fantasies about black men.
After a short time, the Brotherhood sends the narratorback to Harlem, where he discovers that Clifton has disappeared.Many other black members have left the group, as much of the Harlem communityfeels that the Brotherhood has betrayed their interests. The narratorfinds Clifton on the street selling dancing “Sambo” dolls—dollsthat invoke the stereotype of the lazy and obsequious slave. Cliftonapparently does not have a permit to sell his wares on the street.White policemen accost him and, after a scuffle, shoot him deadas the narrator and others look on. On his own initiative, the narratorholds a funeral for Clifton and gives a speech in which he portrayshis dead friend as a hero, galvanizing public sentiment in Clifton’sfavor. The Brotherhood is furious with him for staging the funeralwithout permission, and Jack harshly castigates him. As Jack rantsabout the Brotherhood’s ideological stance, a glass eye falls fromone of his eye sockets. The Brotherhood sends the narrator backto Brother Hambro to learn about the organization’s new strategiesin Harlem.
The narrator leaves feeling furious and anxious to gainrevenge on Jack and the Brotherhood. He arrives in Harlem to findthe neighborhood in ever-increased agitation over race relations.Ras confronts him, deploring the Brotherhood’s failure to draw onthe momentum generated by Clifton’s funeral. Ras sends his men to beatup the narrator, and the narrator is forced to disguise himselfin dark glasses and a hat. In his dark glasses, many people on the streetsmistake him for someone named Rinehart, who seems to be a pimp,bookie, lover, and reverend all at once. At last, the narrator goesto Brother Hambro’s apartment, where Hambro tells him that the Brotherhoodhas chosen not to emphasize Harlem and the black movement. He cynicallydeclares that people are merely tools and that the larger interestsof the Brotherhood are more important than any individual. Recallingadvice given to him by his grandfather, the narrator determinesto undermine the Brotherhood by seeming to go along with them completely.He decides to flatter and seduce a woman close to one of the partyleaders in order to obtain secret information about the group.
But the woman he chooses, Sybil, knows nothing about the Brotherhoodand attempts to use the narrator to fulfill her fantasy of beingraped by a black man. While still with Sybil in his apartment, thenarrator receives a call asking him to come to Harlem quickly. Thenarrator hears the sound of breaking glass, and the line goes dead.He arrives in Harlem to find the neighborhood in the midst of afull-fledged riot, which he learns was incited by Ras. The narrator becomesinvolved in setting fire to a tenement building. Running from thescene of the crime, he encounters Ras, dressed as an African chieftain.Ras calls for the narrator to be lynched. The narrator flees, onlyto encounter two policemen, who suspect that his briefcase containsloot from the riots. In his attempt to evade them, the narratorfalls down a manhole. The police mock him and draw the cover overthe manhole.
The narrator says that he has stayed undergroundever since; the end of his story is also the beginning. He statesthat he finally has realized that he must honor his individual complexityand remain true to his own identity without sacrificing his responsibilityto the community. He says that he finally feels ready to emergefrom underground.
Author | H. G. Wells |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Horror, science fiction novel |
Published | 1897 |
Publisher | C. Arthur Pearson (UK) Edward Arnold (US) |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Pages | 149 |
Text | The Invisible Man at Wikisource |
The Invisible Man is a science fictionnovel by H. G. Wells. Originally serialized in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, it was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a body's refractive index to that of air so that it neither absorbs nor reflects light and thus becomes invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but fails in his attempt to reverse it. An enthusiast of random and irresponsible violence, Griffin has become an iconic character in horror fiction.
While its predecessors, The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau, were written using first-person narrators, Wells adopts a third-person objective point of view in The Invisible Man. The novel is considered influential, and helped establish Wells as the 'father of science fiction'.[1]
Plot summary[edit]
A mysterious man, Griffin, arrives at the local inn owned by Mr. and Mrs. Hall of the English village of Iping, West Sussex, during a snowstorm. The stranger wears a long-sleeved, thick coat and gloves; his face is hidden entirely by bandages except for a fake pink nose; and he wears a wide-brimmed hat. He is excessively reclusive, irascible, unfriendly, and an introvert. He demands to be left alone and spends most of his time in his rooms working with a set of chemicals and laboratory apparatus, only venturing out at night. While Griffin is staying at the inn, hundreds of strange glass bottles (that he calls his luggage) arrive. Many local townspeople believe this to be very odd. He becomes the talk of the village with many theorizing as to his origins.
Meanwhile, a mysterious burglary occurs in the village. Griffin is running out of money and is trying to find a way to pay for his board and lodging. When his landlady demands that he pay his bill and quit the premises, he reveals part of his invisibility to her in a fit of pique. An attempt to apprehend the stranger is frustrated when he undresses to take advantage of his invisibility, fights off his would-be captors, and flees to the downs. In the process, he arms himself with an iron pipe; when a man follows the 'floating pipe' and accidentally forces the Invisible Man into thorn bushes, the Invisible Man commits his first murder.
There Griffin coerces a tramp, Thomas Marvel, into becoming his assistant. With Marvel, he returns to the village to recover three notebooks that contain records of his experiments. When Marvel attempts to betray the Invisible Man to the police, Griffin chases him to the seaside town of Port Burdock, threatening to kill him. Marvel escapes to a local inn and is saved by the people at the inn, but Griffin escapes. Marvel later goes to the police and tells them of this 'invisible man,' then requests to be locked up in a high-security jail.
Griffin's furious attempt to avenge his betrayal leads to his being shot. He takes shelter in a nearby house that turns out to belong to Dr. Kemp, a former acquaintance from medical school. To Kemp, he reveals his true identity. Griffin is a former medical student who left medicine to devote himself to optics. He recounts how he invented chemicals capable of rendering bodies invisible, and, on impulse, performed the procedure on himself.
Griffin tells Kemp the story of how he became invisible. He explains how he tried the invisibility on a cat, then himself. Griffin burned down the boarding house he was staying in, along with all the equipment he had used to turn invisible, to cover his tracks, but he soon realised that he was ill-equipped to survive in the open. He attempted to steal food and clothes from a large department store, and eventually stole some clothing from a theatrical supply shop on Drury Lane and headed to Iping to attempt to reverse the invisibility. Having been driven somewhat unhinged by the procedure and his experiences, he now imagines that he can make Kemp his secret confederate, describing a plan to begin a 'Reign of Terror' by using his invisibility to terrorise the nation.
Kemp has already denounced Griffin to the local authorities and is waiting for help to arrive as he listens to this wild proposal. When the authorities arrive at Kemp's house, Griffin fights his way out and the next day leaves a note announcing that Kemp himself will be the first man to be killed in the 'Reign of Terror'. Kemp, a cool-headed character, tries to organise a plan to use himself as bait to trap the Invisible Man, but a note that he sends is stolen from his servant by Griffin.
Griffin shoots and wounds a Scotland Yard Inspector who comes to Kemp's aid, then breaks into Kemp's house. Kemp bolts for the town, where the local citizenry come to his aid. Griffin is cornered, seized, and savagely beaten by the enraged mob, with his last words being a desperate cry for mercy. Despite Griffin's murderous actions, Kemp urges the mob to stand away and tries to save the life of his assailant, though it is not to be. The Invisible Man's battered body gradually becomes visible as he dies, pitiable in the stillness of death. A local policeman shouts to have someone cover Griffin's face with a sheet.
In the epilogue, it is revealed that Marvel has secretly kept Griffin's notes and—with the help of the stolen money—has now become a successful business owner, running the 'Invisible Man Inn'. However, when not at work running his inn, Marvel sits in his office trying to decipher the notes in the hopes of one day recreating Griffin's work. Because several pages were accidentally washed clean during the chase of Griffin by Marvel and since the remaining Griffin's notes are coded in Greek and Latin, Marvel is completely incapable of understanding them.
Background[edit]
Children's literature was a prominent genre in the 1890s. According to John Sutherland, Wells and his contemporaries such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling 'essentially wrote boy's books for grown-ups.' Sutherland identifies The Invisible Man as one such book.[2] Wells said that his inspiration for the novella was 'The Perils of Invisibility,' one of the Bab Ballads by W. S. Gilbert, which includes the couplet 'Old Peter vanished like a shot/but then - his suit of clothes did not.'[3] Another influence on The Invisible Man was Plato's Republic, a book which had a significant effect on Wells when he read it as an adolescent. In the second book of the Republic, Glaucon recounts the legend of the Ring of Gyges, which posits that, if a man were made invisible and could act with impunity, he would 'go about among men with the powers of a god.'[4] Wells wrote the original version of the tale between March and June 1896. This version was a 25,000 word short story titled 'The Man at the Coach and Horses' which Wells was dissatisfied with, so he extended it.[5]
Scientific accuracy[edit]
Russian writer Yakov I. Perelman pointed out in Physics Can Be Fun (1913) that from a scientific point of view, a man made invisible by Griffin's method should have been blind, since a human eye works by absorbing incoming light, not letting it through completely. Wells seems to show some awareness of this problem in Chapter 20, where the eyes of an otherwise invisible cat retain visible retinas. Nonetheless, this would be insufficient, since the retina would be flooded with light (from all directions) that ordinarily is blocked by the opaque sclera of the eyeball. Also, any image would be badly blurred if the eye had an invisible cornea and lens.
Legacy[edit]
The Invisible Man has been adapted to, and referred to, in film, television, and comics.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^Westfahl, Gary, ed. (2009). The Science of Fiction and the Fiction of Science: Collected Essays on SF Storytelling and the Gnostic Imagination. Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy. McFarland & Company. p. 41. ISBN978-0786437221.
- ^Wells 1996, p. xv.
- ^Wells 1996, p. xviii.
- ^Wells 2017, p. xvii.
- ^Wells 1996, p. xxix.
Bibliography[edit]
- Wells, H. G. (1996), The Invisible Man, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN0-19-283195-X
- Wells, H. G. (2017), The Invisible Man, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0-19-870267-2CS1 maint: location (link)
External links[edit]
Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Invisible Man. |
- The Invisible Man at Project Gutenberg
- The Invisible Man public domain audiobook at LibriVox
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