The Invisible Man读后感

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Analysis of Egoism and Existentialism in The Invisible Man

Have you ever imagined that what if you become invisible one day? When you becomes invisible, you can surely do lots of things that you cannot complete as a visible man. However, what if what you consider a blessing is also a curse? The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells touches on this very same question.

The Invisible Man is a science fiction written by H.G Wells published in the nineteenth century in England. The invisible man in the novel is called Griffin, who was a college student but also an obscure scientist. He devotes himself to the field of optics and invents a way to render skin, bones and blood invisible. After processing a cat successfully, Griffin changes his body’s refractive index to absorb all light and reflect none, which makes him invisible. The scientist uses himself as his first experimentation subject of human being but fails to reverse the process. After the process, he can go anywhere, and menace anyone----sight unseen. He has only two problems: he cannot become visible again and he has gone quite murderously insane. He is just like an evil,murdering his betrayers who were ever his friends and robbing or stealing money ever his farther’s money .Griffin says in the novel,“I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man—the mystery, the power, the freedom.” So he begins his own personal “reign of terror”

I thought Wells did a good job building up the eerie atmosphere that is prominent throughout the story. Actually, the atmosphere is the star of the book as none of the characters resonated with me and the storyline, which mainly consisted of wrecking havoc for havoc’s sake, was not very inspired. The story itself is also quite funny, I thought and many of the scenes played in my mind as slapstick.

How many of us wouldn’t like to be invisible? That’s what the protagonist, Griffin, thought when he became invisible only to find it to be the bane of his existence. Yes, there are some positives aspects, but H.G. Wells concentrates mostly on the negative ones.

Perhaps if Griffin has used his abilities for good aspects, he would have had an easier adjustment to his new life. He could have even become a superhero. Instead, he let his grudges and biases, his fears and paranoia, get the better of him. He goes rotten, hoping to become a figurehead of evil. His desire of reigning the world comes from his nature of egoism. He teems with plans of all the wild and wonderful things he has now impunity to do. Human being is self-fish in nature.Once having super-power, he is quiet easy to go insane and plan to do everything beneficial to himself. To become the king of the world and to make everyone obey him may be the mainly driving factor of he invisible man’s egoism. In the nineteenth century in England, capitalist developed fastly, which brought many ethics problems.People were pursuing money

and rights eagerly. Here, through Griffin’s egoism,Wells expresses his complains of the selfishness and egoism in the capitalist society.

In Griffin’s opinion, invisible is equal to invincible. I think he doesn’t understand “invisible” clearly or he has exaggerated the power of an invisible man.He cannot be seen ,which does not mean that he can convict at random. He is invisible ,but this does not mean that he does not exist .Though he cannot be seen, his convicts are still witnessed.He does not foresee that he still would be vulnerable, which ultimately seals his fate.

What does the jail mean? It means the forbidding of a person to communicate with the outside world. Actually, becoming invisible but living in a visible world is similar to living in a jail. Griffin cannot communicate with the society .He does need a tool to help him,that’s why he is that eager to make Thomas Marvel and Mr. Kemp cooperate with him. But nobody is willing to help a evil. In this condition, being invisible can easily force a kind gentleman into a criminal. It happens that Griffin has a nature of savageness and suspicion. So Griffin will become an evil sooner or later.

The Invisible Man is the ultimate story of an insane anti-hero, before insane anti-heroes became popular. Griffin himself becomes more and more pathetic as the story progress and from the comical star,t Wells moves away to a darker, subtle satire of small minds in small towns can be just as dangerous as any psychopath.

In the end of the novel ,Mr. Kemp together with many copes fights with the invisible man.Though it is very strange and difficult to catch him ,they success in killing him. When he is shot dead, his bruised and broken body becomes visible gradually. He can only become visible unless he dies. Because he has only processed the living cells.I think Wells set this polt intentionally. He is indicating that if one selects to go against the society and the rules, there is no way for him to go back. He will surely be punished.Science should be used to make our lives better,but not to reign the world.

Everyone who tries to reign the world dictatorially will ruin himself.If one does exist, he will never be invisible.

 

第二篇:Invisible man读后感

Ralph Waldo Ellison

(March 1, 1914 – April 16, 1994) was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986).In 1933, Ellison entered the Tuskegee Institute on a scholarship to study music.After his third year, Ellison moved to New York City to study the visual arts. He studied sculpture and photography. From 1937 to 1944 Ellison had over twenty book reviews as well as short stories and articles published in magazines such as New Challenge and New Masses.Published in 1952, Invisible Man explores the theme of man’s search for his identity and place in society, as seen from the perspective of an unnamed black man in the New York City of the 1930s. Through the protagonist, Ellison explores the contrasts between the

Northern and Southern varieties of racism and their alienating effect. The narrator is "invisible" in a figurative sense, in that "people refuse to see" him, and also

experiences a kind of dissociation. The novel, with its treatment of taboo issues such as incest, won the National Book Award in 1953.In 1955, Ellison went abroad to Europe to travel and lecture before settling for a time in Rome, Italy, where he wrote an essay that appeared in a Bantam anthology called A New Southern Harvest in 1957.

Invisible Man (is a novel written by Ralph Ellison, and the only one that he

published during his lifetime (his other novels were published posthumously). It won him the National Book Award in 1953. The novel addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.)

The book's main theme is to never doubt the invisible. In the beginning, the main character lives in a small town in the South. He is a model student, even being named his high school's valedictorian. Having written and delivered an excellent paper about the struggles of the average black man,he gets a scholarship to an all-black college that is clearly modeled on the Tuskegee Institute.During his junior year at the college, the narrator takes Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee, on a drive in the country. He accidentally drives to the house of Jim Trueblood, who impregnated his own daughter.At the Golden Day tavern, Norton passes in and out of consciousness as World War I veterans being treated at the nearby mental hospital for various mental-health issues occupy the bar and a fight breaks out

among them.Through all the chaos, the narrator manages to get the recovered Mr. Norton back to the campus after a day of unusual events. Upon returning to the

school he is fearful of college president Dr. Bledsoe's reaction to the day's incidents. Insight into Bledsoe's knowledge of the events and the narrator's future at the campus is somewhat prolonged as an important visitor arrives. The narrator's dreams are shattered as Bledsoe expels the narrator, for fear that the college's funds will be jeopardized by the incidents that occurred, While the Invisible Man once aspired to be like Bledsoe, he realizes that the man has portrayed himself as a black stereotype in order to succeed in the white-dominated society. Then he arrives in New York and only finds a job in the boiler room of a paint factory.The man in charge of the boiler room, Lucius Brockway, is extremely paranoid and one day and attacks the narrator,which causes a boiler to explode. The narrator is hospitalized after the blast. While recovering, the narrator overhears doctors

discussing him as a mental health patient. After the shock treatments, the narrator attempts to return to his residence when he feels overwhelmed by a certain dizziness and faints on the streets of Harlem.Riots break out in Harlem and the

narrator gets mixed up with a gang of looters. Wandering through a ravaged Harlem, he encounters Ras, who now calls himself Ras the Destroyer.He is trailed by Ras the Exhorter's men as he returns to Harlem; buying sunglasses and a hat, he's mistaken for a man called Rinehart in several scenarios: a lover; a hipster; a gambler; a briber; and finally, a reverend. He sees that Rinehart has adapted to white society at the cost of his own identity. He decides to take his grandfather's dying advice to "overcome'em with yeses, undermine'em with grins, agree'em to death and destruction.... At the end of the novel, the narrator is ready to resurface because "overt action" has already taken place. This could be that, in telling us the story, the narrator has already made a political statement where change could occur. Therefore, it is storytelling and the preservation of the history of these invisible individuals that causes political change.