Invisibility in Literature

So, by now we all should have read Invisible Man front to back - which is a task I know all however many AP LIT students have accomplished. Invisible Man obviously is a book about a man isolated from society, and in a sense is a coming of age book. Yet, there are many other novels that also use a motif of invisibility to convey a loss of identity and a suppossed persona. Take for example the first book titled Invisible Man, but it was by a simple man - H.G. Wells. Ever hear of the Time Machine? Or War of the Worlds? Yeah, exactly. This novel is also pretty intense, (and I actually bought a copy of it before Mrs. Clinch clarified that is was the wrong book...and read most of it because it was really good) and its about, obviously, a literal invisible man. In this story an invisible man, wrapped in bandages, shows up at an Inn to stay for a few weeks. Yet, when the land lady discovers he's literally an invisible man he flees, leaving the towns people hanging. Yes, they were pretty freaked out - so the best option of course when you get scared is to beat him to death! Although he was invisible, the town's people anger acted as a sort of "Invisible-man-dar" and found Griffin (his name) and beat him until their arms got tired. Invisibility in this book acts as a deformity, and illustrates how people hate other people not exactly like them. Which is a commonality in most literature before 1900.
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, a very indepth tale of a boy's magical quest from child abuse, invisibility is also used for a defensive move (an invisibility cloak). But invisibility can be benign. Harry's cloak of invisibility was given to him by Dumbledore in the first Potter novel (it belonged to his father) and is used in every subsequent volume to allow him to get up to his virtuous tricks without his schoolfellows noticing. I'm not really sure if there's a literary purpose here, other than maybe being invisible for the sake of defense shows futility of war? Yeah...that seems like a bit of a stretch. An additional story that makes use of invisibility is “The Headless Horseman”, where the horses remain either invisible or skeletons, and the rider has a pumpkin head. Most students read this at some point in American Lit, and I read it last year for AP LANG. This story seems a tad bit more archetypal than it is deep, but basically the point of invisibility in this story is that the horses are invisiblie to frighten people. See, people are scared of what they do not know. That’s basically why racism exists, and nearly every other fear imaginable. In fact, I do recall from a Doctor Phil show that all fears are based on the fact that you do not have control over the situation. The headless horseman inspired fear because he was indestructible, invisible, and a deathly force to be reckoned with – quite a good theme to convey when writing a horror story. Invisibility works on many frontiers, and not just to illustrate that a man can be completely cast out of society. That would take a volleyball named Wilson…I know bad reference.