theme of 'corruption' in the novel 'the invisible man'?
Answers
Well, After reading the Novel ‘The Invisible Man', I think the theme of the Novel would be Science-fiction and its summary would be-
‘The Invisible Man' is the story of an eccentric scientist named Mr. Griffin who after discovering the formula of invisibility tried it on himself and became invisible. The Novel explores the extent to which Human nature can go. He became invisible to create his reign of terror. The scientist arrives in a small village in South England. He is welcomed in an inn but after sometime the landlady became suspicious of his strange appearance because he was covered from head to foot in bandages and odd behavior as he always covered his mouth with something while talking. After a series of incidents, the village people started gossiping about him and his story started to go around. He managed to get away from them but after a fellow scientist betrayed him, the police started chasing him and he had to ho to extreme measures to protect himself. He wanted to kill Dr. Kemp for betraying him and more importantly he wanted to reverse his invisibility to become visible as only after sometime, he began to see the problems of being invisible. His end was tragic and we feel after reading this Novel what it feels to be invisible and isolated.
The problem of poor morality and corrupted ethics of man has
been quite universal. Whether in the long past, or the current present, or the
distant future, man’s poor morality and ethics have always caused problems or
will cause problems in future. The problem is further aggravated by lack of
social restrictions and initiatives on the part of society as a whole. The
novel ‘Invisible Man’ by H.G. Wells portrays the same problem.
Griffin’s story is of a man who had no conscience, was
callous towards other people and simply self-centered. He appeared to be at war
with the entire mankind. All his actions stemmed from his desire to save
himself, with not a thought about the pain he inflicted on others. That some
traits were inborn can be seen in how he hid his work from his own professor,
lest he or anyone else claimed the credit from it. When he was short of money
he continued his experiments, without any thoughts of the consequences, he
robed his own father, who committed suicide because the money was not his. He
attended his father’s funeral without feeling sorry for his own act; instead he
blamed his father for being a sentimental fool. He experimented on a cat, with
no concern for the poor creature’s cries of pain. He threw it out and never
tried to find whether it was alive or dead. He burnt down the house at Great
Portland Street when the landlord and his sons found about his experiments and
were horrified. He was only worried about covering his trail.
After becoming invisible he committed one brutal act after
another, not because they were necessary for his survival, but simply because
he enjoyed doing them. The way he looted his owner of a small costume shop, and
left after striking the old man on his head, spoke volumes about his
inhumanity. He terrorized Marvel when he was on the run, fought with the
policemen. His plan to spread reign of terror among people using his powers of
invisibility really shocked Dr. Kemp. He even tried to kill him for betraying
him. In his final run from the people hunting him, he killed an old man with a
rod because he bumped into him. Before his death, he had sunk to the lowest
depth a man could go and was truly a monster in human form.
All the bad and immoral things that Griffin did could have been avoided had the people living around him put appropriate restrictions on him through a well organized system.