I see insights in "The Invisible Man"

I learned in my scifi/fantasy class this week that H.G. Wells and Henry James publicly debated whether literature should be primarily about ideas (Wells) or human psychology (James). Since I view all literature primarily as interesting gossip about the neighbors (albeit imaginary ones), it's no surprise I fall in the Jamesian camp. However, while Wells's work is sometimes less appealing, it DOES have a psychological dimension. And he also has interesting ideas. This week's paper is about "The Invisible Man" (and there's Claude Rains in the 1933 movie version at left, but I bet you don't recognize him):

The first half of The Invisible Man takes place in Bramblehurst, a village populated by comic rustic characters--an odd setting for a novel ultimately aimed at seriously exploring the dangers of misused science. But the Bramblehurst rustics serve at least three purposes: 

First, the rustics represent those ignorant of scientific experimentation and its implications, i.e., most of us. The rustics are flummoxed and slow to realize that they have an invisible man in their midst. Their normality, comic though it is, puts the reader on their side when they face science run amok in the person of the Invisible Man, and are unable to stop his rampage.

Second, the rustics represent the Invisible Man's view of common humanity--bumbling, crass, and ignorant. I suspect Wells sympathized somewhat with this view. However, where the Invisible Man's sense of superiority to others, revealed in Chapter XVII, angers him and drives him to use his brilliance to exploit his inferiors, Wells portrayed those "inferiors" as likable despite their faults. Wells also drew a clear moral line between the Invisible Man's scientific discoveries and his evil application of them. 

Third, the rustics represent community; the Bramblehurstians cooperate in trying to capture the Invisible Man, who is outside of and without community. That they are powerless to thwart him symbolizes community threatened by the immoral use of science.

The "community threatened" theme is underscored in the epilogue of the novel, where the Invisible Man's scientific notebooks are discovered in the hands of his henchman, Marvel, a comic rustic with a dark streak. In the final scene, Marvel fingers through the notebooks like a latter day Pandora. The Invisible Man's secrets are as good as out; Marvel will decode or, more likely, sell them to some unscrupulous high bidder. The unsuspecting Bramblehurstians of the world are as good as doomed by the greedy and ignorant, eager to exploit the works of amoral scientific genius.