Wells’ Invisible Man

Wells’ Invisible Man

Wells’ Invisible Man rewrites and answers the tale of Gyges of Plato’s Republic. Griffin possesses the same power of invisibility that Gyges has and the same desire to commit a crime and getting away with the crime. The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is a story in which the storyteller presents himself as an “invisible man.” He states that his invisibility is not related to any supernatural cause or any biochemical accident. However, his invisibility is contributed to the fact that other individuals are unwilling to acknowledge his presence because of his colour. The speaker’s invisibility has served as a frequent augmentation and as an advantage. Sometimes, the narrator doubts his existence because of being invisible[1]. The narrator describes his pain and needs to make other individuals spot him, and he declares that he found that such efforts do not succeed. He recounts an incident in which he bumped into a blonde man in the dark. The tall, blond male insulted him, and the narrator attacked him, demanding an apology. “He hurled the blond man to the ground, pulled his knife, and was ready to slit the throat of the blonde man when the realized that he had been insulted because the blonde man could not see him”. The narrator read a newspaper the following day, and it described the occurrence as a robbery. The narrator then thought about the irony of being robbed by an invisible man.

The descriptions of invisibility and blindness enable readers to understand the impacts of racism on the target and perpetrator. The whites were unwilling to notice the narrator because he was black. The white people refused to recognize him as a real three-dimensional individual. Therefore, he represents himself as invisible, and he refers to the whites as blind. The invisible man’s struggles involve a conflict between how he sees himself and how other people see him. The racist attitudes of whites cause them to view the narrator in terms of racial stereotypes. The whites see him as a bumpkin, savage, or mugger[2]. However, the narrator needs recognition based on his personality and not on these racial pigeon-holes. The blindness of the white originates from a failure to recognize the storyteller without using the strange individualities while referring to him. The invisible man states that with his current situation, how he sees himself does not matter because anyone can make him to assume or provoke an outlandish character by pronouncing racial insults. Therefore, the enviable man escapes the outside world looking for opportunity to characterize him without imperatives imposed on him by racism. His encounter with the tall, blonde man and its handling in the paper illustrates the level of the storyteller’s symbolic slavery.

The man’s insults dehumanized the narrator, and he was forced to attack the white man to compel him to perceive the storyteller’s uniqueness. The paper’s classification of the occurrence as a robbery incident categorizes the invisible man’s act of fighting racism into the service of racism because the tall man became the target and not the attacker while the storyteller together with his desires become unseen to the society. Other people also decided to define the desirable man’s identity, depending on their prejudices[3]. The storyteller also used his invisibility as an advantage because he can apply pressure on the world without being seen and without enduring the outcomes of his actions. The narrator did not mention his name throughout the story, hiding in another type of intangibility to pick up the opportunity to talk unreservedly. Invisibility enabled the narrator to steal energy from a power firm. The narrator forced the power company to notice his existence by illegally using the firm’s resources. By being invisible to them, he declares his presence and manages to escape the company’s regulation. The extreme lights used by the narrator not only enable him to force the power company authorities to notice his presence; the invisible man attempts to see himself clearly without the influence of the opinions from the outside world.

The invisible man is an elaboration of the tale of the Rings of Gyges, recounted in Plato’s Republic because of their similarities in the theme of invisibility which represents freedom and authority. Just like the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the Ring of Gyges talks about the story of Gyges the Lydian who found a ring which could make him invisible when put in one finger and visible again if he turned the ring to another finger[4]. Using the magic power of the ring, he managed things so that he may be able to manage one of the messengers who went up to the king. After reaching the king, Gyges seduced the king’s wife and managed to assassinate the king to take his kingdom. Invisibility is used to symbolize the ability to escape detection. The story of Gyges has been used to present an original form of a question: why should people do right when they can escape punishment when they do wrong? This a challenging and fundamental question, and answering this question requires the reader to read the whole story of the Republic. Reading the whole of Plato’s Republic may not provide the answer without a thorough analysis of the book, and some readers may not manage to find the answer to this question.

While referring to The Invisible Man as an elaboration of the Gyges story, I shall be arguing that Wells took the idea of invisibility from Plato and then transformed it along with the line’s characteristic of Wallisian imaginations. The Invisible Man is an elaboration of the tale of the Ring of Gyges, recounted in Plato’s Republic in the following ways. Well’s protagonist and Gyges discovered ways of making themselves invisible, and they did not have any ethical or societal principles to prevent them from using their new-found power to engage in illegal activities. Gyges offenses vary from lousy table manners and unfriendliness to slaying, and they get worse as the story progresses[5]. At the beginning of the book, he is involved in various conflicts, and he does not make friends with the villager from Iping. The proceeds to rob the vicarage, he forced a vagrant to help him steal and destroy a town because he was angry. Griffin took money from his father to fund his experiments, and he covers his crime by stating that the money did not belong to his father. After making himself invisible, he burnt his home to cover his tracks and took garments, money, and food. Griffin has a character of Plato’s unjust man because he is determined to advance himself at the expense of other people and a lack of moral principles. He also possesses Gyges’s power of invisibility, which could enable him to get away with any wrongdoing.

Griffin is a failed Gyges figure because, like Gyges, he is determined to use invisibility to commit crime and escape without being punished. However, unlike Gyges, Griffin finds himself in difficulty with the challenges experienced by his invisible state. The similarities between Gyges and Griffin create two questions about the actions of Wells in The Invisible Man. Did he use Plato’s idea, and if so, what did he do with Plato in the process? There are some thematic connections between the two works of literature. Besides Griffin’s desires and ruthlessness, he has other common features with Plato’s tyrant[6]. It is fantastic to see the beggar who Griffin forced to help him commit crime as unpleasant and unreliable characters that protagonists need to recruit to assist them. It is not pleasant to find out that in Plato’s opinion of a brutal man imprisoned by his desires, he needs to use his money, and he is ready to commit a crime to maintain self[7]. Griffin is a slave to all these desires though he is imprisoned by the wishes of food and shelter rather than the needs for luxuries. Griffin’s mental disorder seen towards the end of similarities with Plato’s argument that unjust has a diseased soul and is generally unhappy. Wells did not copy Plato’s idea point to point. However, his story is at least consistent with the hypothesis, which is made up of some Platonic themes revolving around Well’s head while he was writing his story.

Wells developed the idea of an invisible man taking a fantastic hypothesis and creating relevant detail of the everyday activities which are realistically presented in the story. Griffin’s invisibility is the fanciful beginning. However, other ideas such as visible clothes, his oppressive scheme, and people’s reaction towards him are believable after the concept of invisibility was formed. On the other hand, Plato used the idea of invisibility differently because he left out the physical details to address the ethical problems[8]. Plato wanted to address the value of justice in itself without being influenced by considerations of pragmatism, such as the challenge of getting caught or the reputation of the protagonist. The story of Gyges is a brilliant way of presenting these challenges[9]. These ethical challenges are logical because sometimes human beings always find themselves thinking that we can get away with wrongdoing. Wells, on the other hand, focuses on the idea of a good deal, and he makes attempts to figure out how it may work in reality. Gyges did not experience any challenge in seducing the king’s wife and then murdering the king. Invisibility made Gyges become a tyrant. However, Griffin did not take crossing a street or eating for granted. Invisibility made Griffin poor and a burglar.

Even if Well did not copy Plato’s idea point to point, he stayed fairly close to his ideas in one respect: the reaction which encourages his audience to want to know more about his protagonist. Many readers would conclude that Griffin is a monster who uses science to achieve his selfish desires, and his power was not being regulated by social or ethical responsibility. Well wanted to present Griffin in this way to help him explain the dangers of possessing skills without having moral or social responsibility[10]. There are more reasons why Wells’ audience saw Griffin, a dangerous man. Griffin was a man who was oppressed and victimized by the uncaring society which he could not control[11]. When Griffin returned home to his father’s funeral, he expressed shocking heartlessness. Plato also believed that many people would also use the ring to be tyrants, and he uses the story of Gyges to explain to us why we should not. The dark thoughts of Griffins and Gyges should alert human beings to the captivations of the ordinary individual. In our better moments, we would not want to destroy a town because we are angry, kill people who disobey us, or steal loss of money. Wells uses Griffin to present to his readers a good villain because our reactions to him are apt to include many disgusts in tension with an equal measure of attraction.

Wells’ Invisible Man rewrites and answers the tale of Gyges of Plato’s Republic. Griffin possesses the same power of invisibility that Gyges has and the same desire to commit a crime and getting away with the crime. However, Gyges filed to achieve his ambitions because of the practical problems created by his invisibility[12]. Wells utilized themes such as tyranny and his youthful captivation with the Republic to show that The Invisible Man borrows some ideas of the tales of Gyges directly. Well, use the concept of the Gyges tale primarily as a starting point for some of his realistic fantasy. He also uses the idea of using invisibility to commit a crime to create his story. Plat approaches the concept of invisibility with ethical arguments. However, Wells utilizes the concept of invisibility to evoke the reader through Griffin: Fascination with unstrained power over the society, mixed with fear when another individual is exercising such power over us. Wells also made attempts to present un-Platonic ideas to challenge the ideas presented by the tales of Gyges.

[1]Books, Worth. Summary and Analysis of Invisible Man: Based on the Book by Ralph Ellison. Open Road Media, 2017.

[2]HERLIS PRATIWI, W. I. J. A. Y. A. N. T. I. “A Journey through Invisibility in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Litera~ Kultura 5, no. 2 (2017).

[3]Books, Worth. Summary and Analysis of Invisible Man: Based on the Book by Ralph Ellison. Open Road Media, 2017.

[4]Holt, Philip. “HG Wells and the Ring of Gyges.” Science Fiction Studies 19, no. 2 (1992).

[5]Foley, Barbara. Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Duke University Press, 2010.

[6]Holt, Philip. “HG Wells and the Ring of Gyges.” Science Fiction Studies 19, no. 2 (1992).

[7]Paytas, Tyler, and Nicholas R. Baima. “Intrinsic Valuing and the Limits of Justice: Why the Ring of Gyges Matters.” Phronesis 64, no. 1 (2018): 1-9.

[8]Verene, Donald Phillip. “The sociopath and The Ring of Gyges: A problem in rhetorical and moral philosophy.” Philosophy& Rhetoric, 43, no. 3 (2010): 201-221.

[9]Morris, Christopher W., and Rachel Singpurwalla. “Ring of Gyges.” International Encyclopedia of Ethics (2013).

[10]Wilcox, Johnnie. “Black Power: Minstrelsy and Electricity in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Callaloo 30, no. 4 (2007): 987-1009.

[11]Ball, Philip. Invisible: the dangerous allure of the unseen. University of Chicago Press, 2015.

[12]Noorani, Ibrahim, and Saima Akhtar. “THE RING OF GYGES AND MODERN WORLD.” Journal of European Studies 34, no. 2 (2018): 101-111.