Title of the work: Invisible Man
Year of writing: 1897
Genre: fantastic story
Main characters: Griffin- scientist, Camp- his classmate
A young talented scientist - a physician - made a phenomenal discovery - he learned to make living matter invisible. He conducted experiments on himself, but he was unable to return to his original state. He took refuge in a small provincial hotel and continued his experiments. Soon Griffin ran out of money and decided to commit a crime.
Earlier, he stole his father's money, which led to the latter's death. Then the scientist, in a fit of rage, set fire to the house and destroyed all his research notes.
Having met Camp by chance, he tells him his story and offers to continue the research together, so that later they can share fame and money. But Camp refuses and turns to the police, because he sees that Griffin, already unrestrained and hot-tempered, has become uncontrollable in his rage and hatred of all humanity. As a result of a police operation, the scientist is killed. After death, he became visible again.
Sometimes scientists do science not for the sake of the happiness of all mankind, but only for the sake of money, as was the case in this story. Griffin's goal in life was the thirst for fame, and he was only interested in science as an opportunity to get it.
And the publicist Herbert George Wells is the author of many science fiction works that made him famous throughout the world and translated into many languages: “The Time Machine”, “War of the Worlds”, “Men Like Gods”, “The Island of Doctor Moreau” and others. Science fiction writers have repeatedly predicted incredible scientific discoveries; this is a well-known fact. Wells, by the way, long before Einstein and Minkowski showed in the novel “The Time Machine” that the real world is nothing more than a four-dimensional space-time substance.
In another book (“War of the Worlds”), the writer predicted modern wars using toxic substances and What did Wells come up with in his most paradoxical and popular work, “The Invisible Man”? A brief answer to this difficult question would sound like this: his hero made an attempt to change and speed up the life processes in the body. How seriously the scientific community takes the writer's imagination can be determined from the fact that the book caused a storm of controversy. The calculations were made in the most scientifically substantiated manner. The scientists' conclusion was clear: the invisible state contradicts common sense, which means it is impossible. This dispute began in 1897, from the moment the work was published, and has not yet ended.
So, H.G. Wells, “The Invisible Man,” a summary of the novel. The main character, the brilliant physicist Griffin, appears in a small tavern on a chilly day, wrapped in a cloak and hiding his face under a hat, bandages and huge glasses. It is impossible not to notice his oddities; he arouses the curiosity of others.
Gradually, the reader learns that the strange visitor whom G. Wells describes from the first lines is an invisible man. He tells his story to an old friend, also a scientist named Kemp, and the reader then finds out what happened to him. Griffin conducted experiments, invented a device that makes a living organism invisible, and a drug for bleaching blood. When there was not enough money for experiments, he conducted the experiment on himself, deciding to take on such an unusual appearance and get a lot of benefits from it. But everything turned out to be not so simple, and Wells vividly describes his ordeal.
“The Invisible Man”: a summary of the novel about a superman
Yes, this is precisely the task the author sets himself: an evil genius who opposes himself to all of humanity cannot and should not survive. It is strange that the filmmakers allowed themselves to interpret differently the accents that Wells clearly placed. “The Invisible Man” (a summary of the idea of the film of the same name by A. Zakharov) found such an embodiment on the Russian screen: Griffin is a misunderstood talent, and Kemp is an evil genius who is trying to prevent him from making great discoveries to save humanity. In the novel, everything is different. G. Wells himself has an inversely proportional attitude to this. The Invisible Man (the summary cannot contain all the brightness of the dialogues and discussions of the characters) is the same evil genius who wants to create a reign of terror and, through the fear of people, seize power over the world. But he is powerless alone, he needs shelter, food, help, and that’s why he came to Kemp’s house.
He, however, is not going to help him, he understands that the madman must be stopped, and calls the police in secret from his guest. The persecution of Griffin begins, and he, in turn, opens a hunt for his friend who betrayed him. The reader finds himself thinking that sometimes he sympathizes with this anti-hero - the invisible man, as Wells describes, experiences too sophisticated methods of bullying. The summary of the book quite vividly conveys the inhuman suffering that a man who wanted to rise above everyone found himself subjected to.
The hero is very vulnerable: he is invisible only when completely naked, but as soon as he gets hurt or dirty, takes food or water, he begins to leave traces. This is what hunters use. The roads are strewn with broken glass, the whole world is up in arms against him and is persecuting him. After all, only when he is alive and unharmed, as Wells writes, is he an invisible man. The main characters, perhaps, are himself, the evil genius who challenged humanity, and the rest of humanity. And he is defeated. Life leaves him, and gradually the transparent outlines of a pathetic, wounded, naked “superman”, the albino Griffin, who turned his talent as a scientist into evil, appear on the earth. And that's why he lost.
Invisible Man. Novel (1897)
At the beginning of February, at the Coachman and Horses inn, owned by Mrs. Hall and her henpecked husband, a mysterious stranger appears, wrapped from head to toe. It is very difficult to get a guest on a winter day, and the newcomer pays generously.
His behavior seems increasingly strange and increasingly alarming to those around him. He is very irritable and avoids human society. When he eats, he covers his mouth with a napkin.
His head is all wrapped in bandages. In addition, the provincials of IPing (a place in Southern England) have no way of understanding what he does. The smell of some kind of chemicals, the clink of broken dishes, and loud curses that the tenant keeps hurling around the house (obviously, something is not working out for him).
Griffin, whose name we learn much later, strives to regain his previous state, to become visible, but fails and becomes increasingly irritated. In addition, he has run out of money, they have stopped feeding him, and he goes, taking advantage of his invisibility, to rob.
Of course, suspicion first falls on him.
The hero is gradually going crazy. He is an irritable person by nature, and now this is clearly manifested. Hungry, exhausted by constant failures with experiments, he takes a crazy step - gradually, in front of everyone, he tears off his disguise, appears before the observers as a man without a head, and then completely disappears into thin air. The first pursuit of the Invisible Man ends happily for him.
In addition, while escaping from her pursuers, the Invisible Man comes across a Marvel tramp called Mr. Marvel - perhaps because he invariably wears a shabby top hat and is very picky about his shoes. And no wonder - a tramp needs nothing more than good shoes, even if they are donated.
One fine moment, while trying on and evaluating new shoes, he hears a voice coming from the void. Mr. Marvel's weaknesses include a passion for alcohol, so he does not immediately manage to believe himself, but he has to - an invisible voice explains to him that he saw in front of him the same outcast as himself, felt sorry for him and at the same time thought that he could help him. help. After all, he was left naked, driven, and he needed Mr. Marvel as an assistant. First of all, you need to get clothes, then money. Mr. Marvel initially fulfills all the requirements - especially since the Invisible Man has not abandoned his aggressive attacks and poses a considerable danger. Preparations for the holiday are underway in Aiping. And before finally leaving Aiping, the Invisible Man causes destruction there, cuts the telegraph wires, steals the vicar’s clothes, takes the books with his scientific notes, burdens poor Marvel with all this and removes himself from the sight of the local inhabitants. And in the surrounding areas, people often see handfuls of coins flashing in the air, or even whole stacks of banknotes. Marvel tries to run away, but is stopped every time by Griffin's voice. And he remembers very well how tenacious the Invisible Man’s hands are. The last time he was just about to open up to a sailor he met by chance, but immediately discovered that the Invisible Man was nearby and fell silent.
But only for a while. Too much money has accumulated in my pockets.
And then one day Dr. Kemp, sitting calmly in his rich house filled with servants and busy with scientific work for which he dreamed of being awarded the title of Fellow of the Royal Society, saw a man in a tattered silk top hat running quickly.
In his hands were books tied with string; his pockets, as it turned out later, were filled with money. This fat man's route was laid out extremely precisely.
First he hid in the Jolly Cricketers tavern, and then asked to be escorted to the police as soon as possible. Another minute - and he disappeared into the nearest police station, where he asked to immediately lock him in the most secure cell. And the doorbell rang at Dr. Kemp's door. There was no one behind the door.
The boys must have been playing around. But an invisible visitor appeared in the office.
Kemp discovered a dark stain on the linoleum. It was blood. In the bedroom, the sheet was torn and the bed was rumpled. And then he heard a voice: “My God, it’s Kemp!” Griffin turned out to be Kemp's university friend.
After Mr. Marvel, scared half to death, hid in the Jolly Cricketers tavern, the Invisible Man, obsessed with a thirst for revenge, tried to break through there, but it ended in disaster.
The Invisible Man had already been trumpeted in all the newspapers, people had taken security measures, and one of the visitors to the “Jolly Cricketers” - a bearded man in gray, judging by his accent, an American, turned out to have a six-shooter revolver, and he began to fire fan-shaped shots at the door. One of the bullets hit Griffin in the arm, although the wound turned out to be harmless.
Griffin is a talented scientist, bordering on genius, but his career has not been going well.
He studied medicine, chemistry and physics, but, knowing the morals that reigned in the scientific world, he was afraid that his discoveries would be appropriated by less gifted people.
In the end, he had to leave the provincial college and settle in some slum London house, where at first no one bothered him. The only thing missing was money. This is where Griffin's chain of crimes begins.
He robs his father, taking other people's money from him, and he commits suicide.
We need to escape from the house that has become uncomfortable. But to do this, you first have to become invisible. And this is a painful process. The body burns as if on fire, he loses consciousness. He is overcome with horror at the sight of his own body becoming seemingly transparent.
When the householder and his stepchildren burst into the room, they are surprised to find no one in it. And Griffin for the first time feels all the inconveniences of his position. Going out into the street, he notices that everyone is pushing him, the cab drivers are almost knocking him down, and the dogs are chasing him with a terrible bark. I need to get dressed. The first attempt to rob a store ends in failure. But then he comes across a poor store, littered with used makeup supplies. Its owner is some unfortunate hunchback, whom he ties in a sheet, thereby depriving him of the opportunity to escape and, most likely, dooming him to starvation. And out of the shop comes the same man who will later appear in Aiping. All that remains is to cover up the traces of your stay in London. Griffin sets the house on fire, destroying all his drugs, and hides in Southern England, from where he can easily cross to France if desired. But first you need to learn how to move from the invisible to the visible state. However, things are not going well. The money has run out. The robbery is revealed.
A chase is organized. The newspapers are full of sensational reports. And in this state, Griffin appears at Dr. Kemp’s - hungry, hunted, wounded. He was an unbalanced person before, but now he has a mania for misanthropy. From now on, he - the Invisible Man - wants to rule people, establishing a reign of terror for decades. He persuades Kemp to become his accomplice. Kemp realizes that in front of him is a dangerous fanatic. And he makes a decision - he writes a note to the chief of the local police, Colonel Adlai. When he appears, Griffin at first does not intend to touch him. “I didn’t quarrel with you,” he says. He needs the traitor Kemp.
But they are already looking for the Invisible Man - according to the plan drawn up by Kemp. The roads are strewn with crushed glass, mounted police are galloping all over the area, the doors and windows of houses are locked, it is impossible to get into passing trains, dogs are prowling everywhere, Griffin is like a hunted animal, and a hunted animal is always dangerous. But he still needs to take revenge on Kemp, who, after killing Adlai, turns from the hunter to the hunted. A terrible invisible enemy is chasing him. Fortunately, already on his last legs, Kemp finds himself in a crowd of fellow countrymen, and then the end awaits Griffin. Kemp wants to save him, but the people around him are unforgiving. And gradually, before everyone’s eyes, a beautiful, but all wounded man reappears - Griffin is invisible while he is alive.
Meanwhile, Mr. Marvel has dressed himself up, bought the Jolly Cricketers tavern with the money he stole from Griffin, and is highly respected in the area. And every evening he locks himself away from people and tries to unravel Griffin’s mystery. Almost his last words: “That was the head!” Yu. I. Kagarlitsky Griffin, a strange stranger (“he was wrapped up from head to toe, and the wide brim of a felt hat hid his entire face”) with small luggage, consisting of two suitcases filled with papers, books and mysterious vessels, appears in the house Mrs Hall. The owner of the guest house is attracted to him by his willingness to stay for a long time and pay decently. The main requirement made by G. to the owner and residents of the house is to respect his sovereignty and loneliness.
Wary of the mysterious behavior of the "guest", the residents of Aiping soon expose the invisible man. Only Kemp, a university friend, G. tells his story. Studying medicine, physics, and in particular the problems of optical impenetrability, G. derives a formula expressing the general law of pigments and light refraction. Hoping to make a great discovery, gain power and freedom, a penniless college assistant conducts experiment after experiment.
Needing money, he robs his father, depriving him of other people's money, as a result of which he commits suicide. G., not tormented by guilt, blindly strives to realize the plan. Finally, after prolonged moral and physical torment, G. becomes invisible. The discovery reveals its destructive power.
Invisible-G. turns out to be socially dangerous. With the help of invisibility, he tries to achieve unlimited power and proclaims a new era of humanity - an era of terror and violence. G.'s first victim is an ordinary passer-by.
The idea is also disastrous for the invisible man himself. G. gains not only freedom and the ability to penetrate everywhere. He finds himself even more exposed and vulnerable than before. “Invisibility allowed us to achieve a lot, but it did not allow us to use what we had achieved.” Exhausted by hunger, cold, and wounds, he dies “on a miserable bed, in a wretched room, among an ignorant, excited crowd, beaten and wounded, betrayed and merciless, hunted, having ended his strange and terrible journey in life.” Corporality returns to the dying G. To the gaze of the crowd, distraught with fear and curiosity, “a naked, pitiful, murdered and mutilated body appears stretched out on the ground... with an expression of anger and despair on its face.”
To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://lib.rin.ru/cgi-bin/index.pl
"The Invisible Man" is one of the most famous works of H.G. Wells. The novel is rightly considered a classic of science fiction literature. It was written more than a hundred years ago (in 1897), but today it has not lost its relevance and is read with great interest. New films and TV series are constantly being made based on “The Invisible Man,” and books are being written. The theme of the novel constantly worries readers; it has become one of the most important in our time. This is the topic of a scientist's responsibility for his inventions. Is a scientist to blame if he creates a terrible weapon or is it not the inventor who is to blame, but the people who use these weapons? The question is complex, one might say eternal. The hero of the ancient Greek myth, Prometheus, brought fire to Earth to warm people, but people quickly learned to burn each other with this fire. The hero of Mary Shelley's novel, Doctor Frankenstein, wanted to defeat death and make man immortal, but he created a monster that brings death and destruction. The problem of scientist's responsibility became especially relevant in the 20th century, after the invention of atomic energy and the atomic bomb. Then humanity was really able to see how, with the help of new scientific inventions and discoveries, it could completely destroy itself. Some scientists are figuring out how to heat houses with gas, while others are coming up with gas chambers in death camps. Where is the line after which a scientific discovery becomes criminal? Why does man’s desire to remake nature, to take on the role of God, always lead to disaster? H.G. Wells tries to answer these questions in his novel The Invisible Man.
At the beginning of the novel, we meet a strange man in a deserted hotel. This man came from nowhere, he is afraid of the light, hides while eating, he is all wrapped in bandages, only the tip of his nose sticks out from the bandages. Who is this strange man? Why does he behave this way and look so strange? Maybe he was maimed by some terrible disaster, so he hides his face from everyone? The novel begins almost in the tradition of a detective story. However, the intrigue does not last long. It soon becomes clear that the mysterious man is the physicist Griffin, who discovered a process that allows one to make a person invisible. First, Griffin makes a cat invisible, and then conducts an experiment on himself and becomes an invisible man. The scientist cannot yet reverse the process and become visible again. Invisibility brings him problems: to remain invisible, he must walk naked, because his clothes are visible, he needs to hide while eating, because food, while being chewed and digested, is visible through him. But gradually Griffin comes to the idea that, thanks to invisibility, he can acquire absolute power over humanity. True, to implement the seizure of power, he needs a visible assistant and Griffin turns to his friend Dr. Kemp for help. The reader will find out how the scientist’s crazy plans turn out at the end of the novel.
Griffin's character is especially important in The Invisible Man. He is a fanatic, obsessed with science; he has no other interests besides science. But why does he need science? To help humanity? No, Griffin is not naive, he needs power equal to that of God. He feels like God, changing nature at will. What cannot be changed must be destroyed. What is morality for God? He is above all morality; God invents morality for his subjects in order to keep them in obedience. Griffin didn't develop a God complex right away. The reader watches how this man gradually changes, how, for the sake of scientific experiments, for which there is always not enough money, he commits his first crime: he steals money from his father, and his father commits suicide. Gradually, theft and murder become commonplace for Griffin, because he is a great scientist, God, Superman, and people for him become just experimental animals.
The novel "The Invisible Man" is written in simple language, and Griffin's adventures are very interesting to follow. The hero's transformation from a brilliant scientist to a ruthless villain is shocking and thought-provoking. Wells's novel is a necessary and useful book for all times. As befits a classic.
The book includes 5 more stories by H.G. Wells: “The Remarkable Incident of Davidson's Eyes,” “The Crystal Egg,” “The Miracle Worker,” “The New Accelerator,” and “The Magic Shop.” The stories are different: there are fairy tale stories (“The Magic Shop”), there are almost mystical stories (“The Remarkable Incident of Davidson’s Eyes”), there is even a kind of prehistory of Wells’s novel “The War of the Worlds” (“The Crystal Egg”). The most striking of the stories is “The Miracle Worker,” which repeats the problem of “The Invisible Man,” but from a different angle. In The Miracle Worker, the main character, a simple clerk without any special ambitions, suddenly becomes endowed with the power of God. He can create anything with just the power of his thoughts. At first, harmless experiments, such as creating Burgundy wines from water, turn into a desire to help people (for example, to make all alcoholics disgusted with alcohol), and then to insane actions that can destroy all of humanity. As a result, the attempt of the new Wonderworker to stop the rotation of the Earth in order to repeat the feat of the biblical hero who stopped the Sun in the sky leads to disaster and the death of all living things.
H.G. Wells' novel "The Invisible Man" was published by Nigma Publishing House in the "Adventureland" series. Like all the other books in the series, the novel was published with high quality: a beautiful gift book design, hard color cover, white coated paper, offset printing. The Adventureland series is especially careful about illustrations in books, and The Invisible Man is no exception. The publication contains illustrations by the famous artist Anatoly Itkin. Itkin’s drawings have already been repeatedly published in books in the series (“Ivanhoe”, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, “The Mysterious Island”, “The Three Musketeers” and others). Anatoly Itkin remained true to his method: the illustrations are bright, colorful, every detail of the drawing is drawn carefully. You want to look at the drawings for a long time, they please the eye and awaken your imagination. I think that children will be especially happy to look at the illustrations.
Dmitry Matsyuk
Herbert George Wells: The Invisible Man. Artist: Anatoly Itkin. Publisher: Nigma, 2017
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“The Invisible Man” by Wells, a brief description of the book is presented in this article.
This novel describes the fate of the English physicist Griffin, who invented a machine that makes a person invisible (and, at the same time, a drug that bleaches blood). True, for complete invisibility a person had to be an albino, which Griffin was. Griffin did not want to make his discovery public ahead of time in order to create a greater sensation later. However, circumstances were such that due to financial difficulties he could not continue his work. He came up with the idea of "disappearing" and starting a completely new life as an invisible man.
Griffin went invisible and set fire to the house where he lived to cover his tracks. At first he felt like “a sighted man in a city of the blind.” However, it soon turned out that his position was not so enviable. He could not make his food and clothing invisible, so he had to walk naked and suffer from the cold, and take food very rarely and secretly from other people. He also could not announce himself, because he was afraid that he would lose his freedom and would be shown in a cage.
All this forced him to find himself in the position of an outcast, avoiding human society. Griffin settled in the village of Iping and began to work to regain his usual “visible” appearance. However, after some time he ran out of money and had to hide again.
Griffin turned for support to a scientist named Kemp, with whom he once studied. Griffin proposed starting a campaign of terror and intimidation of people, the ultimate goal of which would be to seize power. But Kemp refused to cooperate with the invisible man and called the police. Then the invisible man sentenced Kemp to death and began to hunt for him, but ultimately this led to the death of Griffin. He was captured and killed by an angry mob. After death, his body became visible again. The secret of invisibility was never restored, since Griffin destroyed his car, and his notes were stolen by the tramp Thomas Marvel, whom Griffin used as an assistant (Marvel naively hoped to unravel the secret on his own and become invisible).
