Interest in The Invisible Man has understandably tended to focus on the scientific aspects of the tale, especially the questions Wells raises about the ethics of modern technology. He thus takes his place in a line of literary portrayals of mad scientists that stretches back to Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, the prototype of the man who isolates himself from his fellows to pursue an ambitious project and in the process loses his humanity, unleashing forces he can neither truly understand nor control. Driven to his experiments by a fierce ambition in the first place, Griffin grows increasingly megalomaniacal once he becomes invisible. In Wells's hands, the story of Griffin, the University College student who finds a way to make himself invisible, becomes a parable of the dangerous power of modern science. Wells's The Invisible Man has given birth to innumerable literary imitations, film adaptations, and even a couple of television series, thus becoming a kind of modern myth.
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