The Invisible Man

Wells associates Griffin with the color white. Throughout the novel, white carries deathly connotations, conjuring imagery of corpses, skeletons, and ghosts. The experience of beholding Griffin is described as “the sensation of a moment: the white-bound head, the monstrous goggle eyes, and this huge yawn below it” (12). Repeated references to deathly white foreshadow Griffin’s demise from the outset.

Griffin’s serum contains strychnine, a white, poisonous powder. He explains the process of invisibility with “white powdered glass” (83). His first experiment is on a piece of white wool, followed by a white cat. His first crime in Iping falls on Whit Monday, traditionally celebrated with white clothing and decorations. Indeed, the novel’s very opening scene is defined by whiteness: “a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year” (1).

The novel’s most profound expression of whiteness is also the fundamental catalyst for the plot: Griffin’s albinism. Griffin’s response to his albinism is telling; Rather than using his scientific prowess to find a cure (a restoration of pigmentation), he researches invisibility. A cure, which would have allowed him to physically resemble his fellow men, might have redeemed his place within community. Invisibility, in contrast, alienates him. Griffin’s choice of the latter suggests that from the beginning, he lacked a strong tie to humanity and hoped to free himself from the restrictive moral code of society. His death, then, serves as the inevitable consequence of straying so far from the “common conventions of humanity” (106).