Willis Pule’s madness

Willis Pule’s madness is presented as a collapse of judgment and purpose that gathers force across the novel’s later crises. Humiliation and failed plans first drive him toward revenge, but his thoughts and actions become progressively less controlled: laughter gives way to despair, the public mistakes him for something unnatural, and an attempted explosion ends in failure. By the confrontation with Birdlip, even theft has ceased to motivate him; destruction itself has become his apparent aim. Theophilus Godall lets him depart, and Langdon St. Ives later wonders what became of him, leaving the final course of his life unknown.

Breakdown in the Streets

After the events at Kelso Drake’s house, Pule walks through London’s alleys with little composure left. His face is covered in sticking plaster, and the chemical mixture beneath it causes pain and might explode. Rather than respond with ordinary fear, he imagines the spectacle of appearing before his enemies and having his head detonate in the middle of a speech. He finds the idea amusing, laughs at his own joke, and treats his ability to laugh as evidence that he will prevail. The moment makes his loss of control visible even to himself: he tries to complete a clever thought about keeping his head, abandons it, and continues giggling.

The laughter becomes increasingly difficult to contain. Pule whoops and reels along the street, alarming people who see him, until the effort gives way to despair. His intermittent giggles turn to sobs, and he reaches a public house wretched, homeless, and still exposed to the chemical preparation. This abrupt passage from amusement to misery establishes a recurring instability: his emotional display no longer offers a reliable account of what he can endure or what he intends to do. The novel places his private collapse in public streets, where strangers encounter its effects without knowing its history.

Revenge and Public Misrecognition

As he continues through the city, Pule counts the abuses he believes he has suffered during his months with Ignacio Narbondo and rages at the destruction of the plans he brought to London. He resolves to take revenge on everyone involved, naming Narbondo first and Drake as another target. If he cannot reach Drake, he plans to wait for Birdlip’s dirigible to land and take whatever he can from it. These intentions show that he can still formulate objectives, but they are bound to grievance and opportunism rather than any stable larger plan.

The chemical preparation beneath the bandages vaporizes as he walks, and the fumes make his eyes water; the plaster itself loosens and unwinds. When he enters a frightened crowd, his altered appearance becomes the basis for a collective misidentification. People cannot decide whether he is an alien or a ghoul, only that he seems unnatural. Pule initially fails to notice the commotion, then recognizes that the crowd has made him into a figure of terror. The episode turns his private deterioration into a public spectacle: the city’s existing fear of aliens and ghouls is projected onto a man whose alarming appearance has arisen from his own compromised condition.

The Failed Explosion

Pule later appears on a landing with a sputtering light and muffled laughter. Two men expect a walking corpse to emerge from the dark passage, but instead see Pule approaching with a lit fuse attached to an infernal device. The scene makes the earlier fantasy of an explosive entrance grimly concrete: he now carries a device toward other people, rather than merely imagining his own head as a bomb. Bill Kraken and Hasbro flee across adjoining rooftops; the explosion follows, leaving a smoking crater in Pratlow Street. Pule escapes toward Holborn, but the attempt has been foiled once again.

This failure does not restore a practical purpose to his actions. At the later encounter with Birdlip, who has landed and is holding the Keeble box, Pule takes Godall by surprise and rushes at the doctor. Godall tries to stop him, but the narration distinguishes this assault from a theft: Pule is no longer pursuing the box or another material advantage. His desire has narrowed to mayhem and ruin. The distinction marks a decisive change in the character’s trajectory, from schemes of revenge and plunder to destruction without a discernible practical end.

Abandonment and Unresolved Fate

After the attack, Pule clutches his head and withdraws into the shadows. The narration describes him as spent and empty, and Godall chooses not to pursue him. Instead, Godall allows him to wander away, imagining that he might beg or find a place in a sideshow. That possibility is not confirmed as Pule’s eventual fate; it is only the future Godall supposes while watching him leave.

The novel preserves that uncertainty in its closing discussion. St. Ives asks what became of Pule and recalls that he was utterly mad at the end. The question receives no answer in the supplied account, so Pule’s disappearance remains a loose end rather than a completed resolution. His trajectory nevertheless has a clear shape: injury and humiliation feed revenge; unstable laughter and despair accompany his flight; repeated failures strip away his former objectives; and, at the last, he is left to drift beyond the reach of the other characters. Madness here is conveyed through changes in conduct and purpose, not through a stated diagnosis, and its final consequence is both personal ruin and narrative uncertainty.