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The Invisible Man

 

             Hammond once said, "It is perhaps difficult for a twentieth-century reader to recapture the sense of excitement which must have been experienced by those who read the Invisible Man for the first time on its publication as a serial in Pearson's Weekly in the summer of 1897 and as a book in the autumn of that year."" Yet, to a contemporary reader, it is also apparent that this novel does not purely narrate a story about a selfish young scientist-a hunter who is hunted at last. We can capture the author's profound thoughts if we look through the disguise of the science fiction color. Its thesis is the conflicts between group and the individual and the conflicts begin as soon as the secret of invisibility becomes public.
             When first reading the Invisible Man, readers will find the title itself resonant, dangerous; although its resonance may have become a little muted through repetition after more than a century in print. Simmering in their mind are mainly two questions, one theological and one sociological: What if a man could be invisible yet still active in society? And, what would this man do without the public observing? .
             Griffin, the young chemist and physicist, discovers the secret of invisibility and becomes transparent himself. When imagining an invisible man walking on the street freely, we may feel amused and curious first due to the fact that many of us have ever fancied ourselves invisible "sometimes we find ourselves naked going through the crowd in our dreams. But later on the second thought, we will find a lack of both privacy and security because an invisible man means a disembodied voice, a walking emptiness who can witness whatever you do, a threat both anarchic and extremely terrifying, which means he can do anything he wants on one hand and he could be right next to you on the other hand. Furthermore, people will consider him as a threat to the human beings' normal life in which people live harmoniously partly because they can keep an eye on each other.


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