# Griffin (The Invisible Man)
**Griffin** is the scientist at the center of [H. G. Wells](https://www.edgepedia.org/h-g-wells)'s 1897 novel *[The Invisible Man](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-invisible-man-1933-film): A Grotesque Romance*, who renders himself invisible by an optical and chemical process and, unable to reverse it, descends into violence and dies at the hands of a mob[1](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5230) • [2](https://unanswered.io/guide/who-is-the-invisible-man-griffin-identity). In the original novel he has no first name and is called only Griffin; the full name Jack Griffin comes from the 1933 Universal film adaptation, and later adaptations frequently assign him a first name or alter his identity, a lasting source of confusion[2](https://unanswered.io/guide/who-is-the-invisible-man-griffin-identity).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| First appearance | *The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance*, a novel by H. G. Wells (born 1866), first published in 1897[3](https://www.comics.org/character/70787/) |
| Name | No first name in the 1897 novel; "Jack Griffin" in the 1933 film, "Adrian Griffin" in the 2020 film[2](https://unanswered.io/guide/who-is-the-invisible-man-griffin-identity) • [4](https://time.com/5792835/the-invisible-man-domestic-abuse/) |
| Method of invisibility | Griffin theorizes that if a person's refractive index is changed to exactly that of air and the body neither absorbs nor reflects light, he will not be visible[5](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Man_%281897%29) |
| Appearance | "Almost an albino," six feet high and broad, with a pink and white face and red eyes; he won the medal for chemistry at University College, and his restored body is that of a young man about thirty[6](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5230/5230-h/5230-h.htm) • [7](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-invisible-man/characters/griffin-the-invisible-man) |
| Fate | Killed by a mob in Port Burdock, at which point his body becomes visible again[7](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-invisible-man/characters/griffin-the-invisible-man) |
| Screen debut | Universal Pictures' *The Invisible Man* (1933), directed by James Whale, with Claude Rains as Dr. Jack Griffin; added to the National Film Registry in 2008[8](https://www.loc.gov/item/2001643804/) |
| Screen descendants | The invisible man and his descendants appeared in six films from 1933 to 1951[9](https://time.com/5795861/invisibility-movies-history/) |
## The character in the novel
The novel opens with a mysterious stranger who arrives on foot at the Coach and Horses Inn in the village of Iping during a snowy February, his face hidden behind dark blue spectacles, bandages, and bushy side-whiskers[10](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/invisible-man-h-g-wells/). He takes rooms from Mrs. Hall, pays handsomely, and keeps to himself, filling his room with bottles and strange apparatus; the villagers' curiosity grows as odd events, including a burglary at the vicarage in which the intruder is unseen, accumulate around him[10](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/invisible-man-h-g-wells/). When the overdue bill leads to a confrontation and a warrant, the stranger unmasks himself to reveal that he is invisible, and he flees the inn; the newspapers soon call him the [Invisible Man](https://www.edgepedia.org/invisible-man)[10](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/invisible-man-h-g-wells/).
**The reveal.** The narrative withholds the protagonist's name until nearly midway through the book, when Griffin takes refuge with Dr. Kemp, a former classmate, and tells him his story[11](https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/gdc/gdcebookspublic/20/19/66/78/82/2019667882/2019667882.pdf). He identifies himself in the words, "I am Griffin, of University College, and I have made myself invisible. I am just an ordinary man, a man you have known, made invisible," and describes himself as a younger student than Kemp, almost an albino, six feet high and broad, with a pink and white face and red eyes, who won the medal for chemistry[6](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5230/5230-h/5230-h.htm). Kemp recognizes him as a former student who dropped medicine and took up physics[12](https://web.ncf.ca/fs546/Books/Invisible_Man.html).
**Backstory and method.** A former medical student at [University College London](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-college-london), Griffin never graduated and instead pursued research into light and optics[7](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-invisible-man/characters/griffin-the-invisible-man). After testing the process on his neighbor's cat, he performed it on himself; unlike most scientists, he did not seek the approval of the scientific community and refused to publish his research[7](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-invisible-man/characters/griffin-the-invisible-man). In the novel's own physics, he explains to Kemp that visibility depends on the action of visible bodies on light: a body that neither absorbs, reflects, nor refracts light cannot of itself be visible, and his idea was a method by which, without changing any other property of matter except, in some instances, colors, the refractive index of a substance, solid or liquid, could be lowered to that of air[13](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_Works_of_H_G_Wells_Volume_3.pdf/142). Wells, keen that his "scientific romances" be scientific, devotes Chapter 19, "Certain First Principles," to authenticating the central concept; he managed the problem of the black pigment in hair by making Griffin albino, though one feature of the hypothesis evidently remained insolubly inauthentic to the author[14](https://academic.oup.com/book/49126/chapter-abstract/422049102).
**Descent and death.** Once invisible, Griffin discovers that life is not as easy as he imagined: he struggles to eat and find shelter, which fills him with bitterness and rage and heightens his already misanthropic nature[7](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-invisible-man/characters/griffin-the-invisible-man). The novel reports that among his many acts of violence he shoots an off-duty policeman and Colonel Adye and kills Mr. Wicksteed[7](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-invisible-man/characters/griffin-the-invisible-man). He is killed by a mob in Port Burdock, and as he dies his body becomes visible again: the text describes the bruised and broken body of a young man about thirty, his hair and brow white with the whiteness of albinism and his eyes like garnets[6](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5230/5230-h/5230-h.htm).
## The 1933 film
[Universal Pictures](https://www.edgepedia.org/universal-pictures)' *The Invisible Man* (1933), directed by [James Whale](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-whale) from a screenplay by R. C. Sherriff, is the first official screen adaptation of Wells's novel, with [Claude Rains](https://www.edgepedia.org/claude-rains) as Dr. Jack Griffin[8](https://www.loc.gov/item/2001643804/) • [9](https://time.com/5795861/invisibility-movies-history/). In the film, Griffin has been experimenting with a drug of his own concoction, finds that it has turned his entire body invisible, goes to a small English village to hide his discovery until he can reverse it, and is slowly driven by the same drug to commit acts of unspeakable terror[8](https://www.loc.gov/item/2001643804/). The film stays largely true to the novel's narrative while adding new characters such as Flora Cranley (Gloria Stuart), Griffin's fiancée, and rendering the lead somewhat more sympathetic[15](https://time.com/5791119/the-invisible-man-movie-vs-book/). Wells had script approval over the 1933 version, so it remains relatively faithful to his original work[9](https://time.com/5795861/invisibility-movies-history/).
**The costume and the effects.** The disguise Griffin wears to appear visible, white bandages around the head, a fake nose, dark glasses, and a pork-pie hat, became a [Halloween](https://www.edgepedia.org/halloween) classic[15](https://time.com/5791119/the-invisible-man-movie-vs-book/). The bandaged head, dark glasses, overcoat, and gloves became the default way to represent an invisible character on screen[9](https://time.com/5795861/invisibility-movies-history/). The special effects, achieved without green screens or CGI, had Rains wear a black velvet suit filmed against a black velvet background, from which the filmmakers composited his props and costumes into the scene so that he appeared invisible within it; when he is not wearing the costume, props moved by wires or unseen hands, such as a rolling bicycle, collapsing cushions, and rocking chairs, signal his presence[9](https://time.com/5795861/invisibility-movies-history/). The film was added to the [National Film Registry](https://www.edgepedia.org/national-film-registry) in 2008[8](https://www.loc.gov/item/2001643804/).
## Later adaptations
Universal's follow-up films shifted the character in two directions. The invisible man and his descendants appeared in six films from 1933 to 1951, collected by the studio as *The Invisible Man: Complete Legacy Collection*: *The Invisible Man* (1933), *The Invisible Man Returns*, *The Invisible Woman*, *Invisible Agent*, *The Invisible Man's Revenge*, and *Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man*[9](https://time.com/5795861/invisibility-movies-history/) • [16](https://www.universalpicturesathome.com/movies/the-invisible-man-complete-legacy-collection). Starting in 1934, increased enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code encouraged studio-era versions to cast invisible characters as victims who used invisibility to right a wrong: in *The Invisible Man Returns* and *Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man*, sympathetic scientists turn wrongfully accused men invisible so they can escape capture and clear their names, while in *Invisible Agent* a descendant of the original invisible man supplies the serum to the U.S. military to combat the Nazis[9](https://time.com/5795861/invisibility-movies-history/).
Most later adaptations have made the lead more sympathetic than Wells's book, from the parodies of the Universal series onward[17](https://screenhub.blog/2020/03/15/how-invisible-man-differs-from-past-adaptations-screenhub-entertainment/). In [Leigh Whannell](https://www.edgepedia.org/leigh-whannell)'s 2020 film, the antagonist is named [Adrian Griffin](https://www.edgepedia.org/adrian-griffin), a nod to Wells's Griffin: an optics tycoon who fakes his death and uses a suit that renders him invisible to torment his ex-partner Cecilia Kass, played by [Elisabeth Moss](https://www.edgepedia.org/elisabeth-moss)[4](https://time.com/5792835/the-invisible-man-domestic-abuse/) • [15](https://time.com/5791119/the-invisible-man-movie-vs-book/). Whannell built the film's depiction of manipulation, isolation, and physical abuse on interviews with two domestic violence counselors at Peace Over Violence in Los Angeles, framing invisibility as a metaphor for gaslighting and coercive control[4](https://time.com/5792835/the-invisible-man-domestic-abuse/). A 2022 stage version by Philip Correia at Northern Stage, Newcastle, made invisibility an analogy for social invisibility, with Simon Griffin a young Northumberland man excluded from school and society even before the vanishing act[18](https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/feb/07/the-invisible-man-review-northern-stage-newcastle).
## Critical interpretation
Wells's own framing presents Griffin as an anti-hero: despite a gradual slide into violent megalomania, readers are meant to see a tragedy of scientific ambition, of someone who loses self, soul, and life in pursuit of progress[9](https://time.com/5795861/invisibility-movies-history/). A more recent scholarly reading questions the long-standing interpretation of his madness: Jing Yu of the School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University, China, writing in the *Journal of Victorian Culture*, argues that Griffin's mistrust of the outside world and reticence about his discovery are not only signs of irrationality but rational responses to a culture of exclusion and insecurity in late Victorian science, and that his secrecy enacts a mute protest against an unsupportive academic environment[19](https://academic.oup.com/jvc/article/31/2/107/8718614). On this reading, the novel resists a straightforward moral judgment of Griffin and invites readers to reconsider the psychological ordeal the young man experiences[19](https://academic.oup.com/jvc/article/31/2/107/8718614).
[Ralph Ellison](https://www.edgepedia.org/ralph-ellison)'s 1952 novel *Invisible Man*, which won the [National Book Award](https://www.edgepedia.org/national-book-award), is a separate work about an unnamed Black narrator rather than a derivation from Wells's character, though the two are often mentioned together[20](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/07/how-can-the-light-deny-the-dark/377698/).
## References
1. [*The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance* by H. G. Wells, Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5230)
2. [Who Is the Invisible Man? Griffin's Name Explained, Unanswered](https://unanswered.io/guide/who-is-the-invisible-man-griffin-identity)
3. [The Invisible Man character page, Grand Comics Database](https://www.comics.org/character/70787/)
4. [How *The Invisible Man* Based Its Gaslighting Thriller on Real-Life Stories of Abuse, TIME](https://time.com/5792835/the-invisible-man-domestic-abuse/)
5. [*The Invisible Man* (1897), Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Invisible_Man_%281897%29)
6. [*The Invisible Man* full text, Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5230/5230-h/5230-h.htm)
7. [Griffin/The Invisible Man Character Analysis, LitCharts](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-invisible-man/characters/griffin-the-invisible-man)
8. [The Invisible Man (1933), Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2001643804/)
9. [Beyond *The Invisible Man*: A Brief History of Invisibility on Screen, TIME](https://time.com/5795861/invisibility-movies-history/)
10. [The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells, EBSCO Research Starters](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/invisible-man-h-g-wells/)
11. [*Before Einstein*, Library of Congress e-book, on the mid-novel reveal of Griffin's name](https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/gdc/gdcebookspublic/20/19/66/78/82/2019667882/2019667882.pdf)
12. [*The Invisible Man*, Project Gutenberg eBook edition (web.ncf.ca mirror)](https://web.ncf.ca/fs546/Books/Invisible_Man.html)
13. [Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 3.pdf/142, Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AThe_Works_of_H_G_Wells_Volume_3.pdf/142)
14. [Why is Griffin cold?, in *The Literary Detective: 100 Puzzles in Classic Fiction*, Oxford Academic](https://academic.oup.com/book/49126/chapter-abstract/422049102)
15. [How the New *Invisible Man* Movie Updates H.G. Wells' Original Horror Story, TIME](https://time.com/5791119/the-invisible-man-movie-vs-book/)
16. [The Invisible Man: Complete Legacy Collection, Universal Pictures At Home](https://www.universalpicturesathome.com/movies/the-invisible-man-complete-legacy-collection)
17. [How *Invisible Man* Differs from Past Adaptations, ScreenHub Entertainment](https://screenhub.blog/2020/03/15/how-invisible-man-differs-from-past-adaptations-screenhub-entertainment/)
18. [The Invisible Man review, The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/feb/07/the-invisible-man-review-northern-stage-newcastle)
19. [Jing Yu, "'And you know the knavish system of the scientific world': Secrecy and academic ecosystem in H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man," *Journal of Victorian Culture* 31(2), 107–124](https://academic.oup.com/jvc/article/31/2/107/8718614)
20. ["How Can the Light Deny the Dark?", The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/07/how-can-the-light-deny-the-dark/377698/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Creative written works and worlds › Adaptations, tie-ins, and fictional worlds › Fictional universes, characters, and places › Characters from individual novels › Characters from 19th-century novels*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 19, 2026; Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 19, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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