A suspicious man, covered in long, dark clothes over his whole body, with bandages on his face and a large hat over his head shows up in the town of Iping. His hostess’ first impression is that he had an accident or is scarred, but soon she loses any sympathy for him, when he keeps treating her rudely, while continuing strange experiments in his room, and soon she’s only keeping him for the money. Things start getting dangerous for him, as he runs out of money, and simultaneously a house gets robbed by an invisible man, whereas he pulls suspicion on himself.
At first the story was very confusing for me, because as the title was “The Invisible Man”, I felt like that man would be the “good guy” in the story, and not that rude, bitter guy that I pictured at the beginning of the book.
Being invisible…. no friends, no family, everyone is afraid of you….. it must have some influence on the way you think. You stop having kind sentiments toward humanity, because humanity has turned its back on you. And the process of becoming invisible, in a way changes how your cells are, how they work, and seeing how the brain is flexible but still sensible…. wouldn’t something have changed?
But then, for someone to be so paranoid about his work, wanting to keep it secret, for himself, and then for wanting to turn oneself invisible…. what kind of mind would you have to have?
My impression is not that being invisible made him crazy, but rather enforced the feelings he already had deep inside of him.
I believe if he had been kinder to the people around him, had a purer heart, they wouldn’t all have turned their back on him. They wouldn’t all have tried to arrest him, hurt him, keep him away, and maybe wouldn’t have discovered his secret in the first place.
Ayame
