Essay Questions

What was Griffin’s plan before he accidentally discovered his former college classmate Kemp?

The biggest obstacle facing Griffin’s putting his invisibility to the greatest use possible—and the one element he completely overlooked when discovering the secret—was the limitation of having to be completely naked. To be in England, in the wintertime, with no clothes on is not a condition conducive to being at the top of your game. In addition, Thomas Marvel had conducted one of the greatest worker revolutions against the man in recorded literature, getting away not only with Griffin’s cash staff, but his notebooks containing all his written notes about his experiments which, in the hands of the right person, could potentially make his own invisibility no longer a thing of power. With nothing to gain from staying in England, therefore, his plan was to head to warmer climates in southern regions and take greater advantage of his limitations in place like Spain or northern Africa.

What thematic purpose does commencing the story with Griffin already invisible and arriving in a small village serve?

An invisible man showing up in a provincial village instantly creates a dichotomy which the novel will explore throughout the narrative: past versus future, ignorance versus knowledge, superstition versus science. Overtones are introduced as the invisible Griffin can be seen almost as a Nietzschean superman in comparison to the simple bumpkins of Iping. When it comes time to fill in the backstory of how Griffin became invisible, he notably trusts only his academic peer Kemp to understand whereas he treats the villagers contemptuously for ever daring to making inquiries about his secret experiments. In this way, the novel is a subtle confirmation of Darwinian evolution with its suggestion that science is going to create a future barely recognizable to those living now.

Is The Invisible Man an example of—or, more precisely, forerunner or prototype of—magical realism?

An invisible man shows up in a small British village around the turn of the 20th century and creates havoc. Nobody in the village understands how this invisibility happened, where the man comes from or what he wants. And the man uses his invisibility as a weapon of terror. His outlandish physical abnormality is situated within a completely ordinary and commonplace reality. There are no other invisible men coming. He is not presented as an otherworldly alien, but an otherwise ordinary human being. In addition, it can be fairly said that the novel supplies a deeper understanding of human nature with its suggestion that being endowed with powers which reduce the natural limitations upon humanity as a social creature will inevitably lead to corruption. Griffin also uses his invisibility to upset the natural order. All these are elements commonly attributed to the genre of magical realism which was came into being long after the appearance of this novel. In the end, however, it is absolutely beyond question that The Invisible Man should not be categorized as a prototypical example of this genre due to one reason: Griffin explains his invisibility. The fundamental foundation of magical realism is not just that the magical is introduced into a realistic setting in such a way that it clearly stands out from the norm, but that its appearance and mechanics remain unexplained. It is this mythic element which serves the whole purpose.