Eyes

After having spent valuable time of my life reading The Invisible Man by Herbert George Wells on my kindle and being inspired to the point of lunacy, I have come to the realization that a book can’t have two different modern covers (Unless there is a movie based on it which will deem the book susceptible to be plagued by the cheap-looking cover of the actors such as a demure Kristen Stewart and a constipated and sparkly James Patterson on the cover of Twilight).

Well.

So my previous blog entry was actually written on The Invisible Man and not, Invisible Man. And so. Complaining aside, here it goes.

“I am an invisible man.” Whoa. If that’s not a direct and life-altering way to start a novel, I do not know what it. The direct, statement/no-questions-asked, matter-of-fact diction creates a character that is very sure of what he is talking about. The imagery when he says he is very much “flesh and bone. Fiber and liquids,” takes away the expectation of his invisibleness being transparent and useable, a physical invisibility and in actuality, real flesh. His “people just refuse to see me” creates a more deep concept of invisibility. His allusion to Edgar Allen Poe’s usually creepy ghosts and his negating the fact this his is like that of the former’s characters clears the idea that he is not the invisible ghost/transparent perceived entity, but more one who is invisible because people decide to view him as such. When he says this, his tone is accusatory and point-blank, almost as if criticizing the reader for even thinking otherwise, for even imagining his invisibility as anything but figurative.

The character uses irony when he says, “I might even be said to posses a mind.” He is sarcastically giving other people the right to judge what he can rightfully judge himself, the obvious fact that he does, indeed, possess a mind. His sarcasm serves to create an antagonistic relationship with those who happen to say he does, giving them a kind of unrightfully gained authority. In this case, the reader might take the authority to be racist America, ignorant in their judgment of him. Their ignorance is described when he eloquently and formally says his invisibility is not a product of a biochemical accident, but that “to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact,” who choose not to see him. And so ‘eyes’ become a symbol for the obvious, perspective, but also of poor-vision and near-sightedness to the extent of being narrow-minded and blind in ignorance and blindfolded by prejudice.

But he seems pretty uncaring of this fact, as seen when he says, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” In his diction we can see he is all accepting of the fact that he is invisible. He speaks almost casually.

The imagery and his comparison of his being like those “Bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as if I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorted glass.” The imagery encases his point that he is in full possession of a mind but is constrained by society, his lack of body and lack of presence in society.

But apparently, he is not a real person lacking rights. He is solely a vision of people’s dreams. Just like when he pounds a white man to a bloody pulp on a deserted street below a lamplight, the scene being that of common mystery TV shows. The setting then adds to the surreal aspect of it all and to emphasize the character’s point that he is, indeed, just figment of people’s dreams. And we see his belief of this when he snorts at the news reports the day after about the blonde man reporting being mugged, and responds, “Poor fool, mugged by an invisible man.”

He believes it.