A Cold Wintry Day

And so it all starts on a cold, wintry February.

What an enticingly way to begin a novel. It’s oh-so-very different from the usual, “ A fine summer day,” and the customary, “One hot, sweltering evening,” etc. Actually. It is.

Herbert George Wells uses personification to make this expected beginning an aberration from the usual. The “biting” wind and the “driving” snow serve to create a wind so powerful, menacing, piercing with whatever invisible teeth seem to grasp flesh, and with so much drive and powerful intent. The setting being cold and dark and the “stranger” walking down the icy streets create an aura of suspense, mystery and wonder. The imagery when the author describes the stranger as being wrapped from head to foot covering creates a shield that is protecting himself from his surroundings. And maybe he’s not just using that thick cloth wrapping as an armor to protect himself from the biting wind, but also everything else in the bitter outsides that is not the stranger. The people, the human inefficiencies, mistakes, his own bitter curiosity biting him in the ass.

Curiosity that is symbolized by the fact that every part of his body is covered except his nose. Like when he was walking in the beginning of the novel, “he was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his felt hat hid every inch of his face except the tiny tip of his nose.” And later, in the warm confines of the room he finds housing in, “It was the fact that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of his face exposed excepting only his pink, peaked nose.” The repetition of his nose being the only scrap of his face that is visible remaining through the day emphasizes the existence of his nose, a nose usually representing nosiness and curiosity. So said stranger is a character that is stamped by his curiosity, which is probably the reason he decided to become invisible in the first place. (The back of the cover said so.)Hmm.

The fact that when the stranger gets into the “Coach and Horses” he exclaims “A room and a fire!” the diction and how he exclaims such simple things leads the reader to infer that this guy has been living without a room and without a fire. Probably homeless. Probably a sad drunk that got kicked out of his house due to his constant pummeling of random dishes during dinnertime? Ah, no. It’s the fact that he did everything possible to become invisible and apparently not being seen by humanity is just not all that it’s cracked out to be.

And maybe bitter ending and crash of his expectations ended in his becoming totally bitter and unapproachable human being. I mean, with his dry comments and monosyllabic answers, something must have affected him in some way. I mean, his answers range on “No,” and “Thank you” and have the overall dry tone and described as ‘with emphasis,’ ‘with aggressive brevity,’ ‘concisely’, and ‘drily’ describing each and every word that comes out of his lips. His manner of speaking mixes to create such a tough manner and wonder at what might have happened to make him this way.

Tun. Tun. Tun.

And we wonder.