Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

I don't think I will ever understand why the point of view of so many classic novels is placed at such a distance from the subject of the story. I think it was the reason I found [b:Dracula 17245 Dracula Bram Stoker https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387151694s/17245.jpg 3165724] so profoundly boring. At least [b:Frankenstein 35031085 Frankenstein Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1498841231s/35031085.jpg 4836639] is told from Victor Frankenstein's perspective, even if it is within the pretense of him telling someone else. When The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde began, I was willing to humor the point of view, even though it does seem to be designed to be as uninteresting as possible. Banality can in fact be quite striking when placed as a backdrop to the extraordinary, and the presence of the rogue and demonic Mr. Hyde is quite extraordinary. At first. Though the story of Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde has been rewritten mythologically in our culture as one of the duality of good and evil, it is in fact more about restraint and lack thereof. Dr. Jekyll, by his own admission, does not manage to rid himself of his unearthly desires, but rather gives himself a means for indulging in them that does not damage his reputation. Edward Hyde is less an alternate personality and more an elaborate disguise. The problem arises when he can't take the mask off. Whatever proclivities Jekyll has that he uses Hyde to enact are never elaborated on. I suppose that's the point - when we are told Hyde is evil, but Jekyll was simply “wild” in his youth, we're supposed to come to our own conclusions about what that means Edward Hyde is running around doing. Not going to lie though, it is mildly disturbing to think that whatever Jekyll wants to get up to so baldly but doesn't want to get caught doing, he's willing to to experiment on himself with dangerous chemicals in order to get away with it. Hyde's not the one that bothers me. It's the upstanding scientist whom everyone thinks is swell but in secret wants to....I guess you can just insert your personal evil here. It makes the good doctor far from sympathetic. His scientific advancements are less spooky and more like the predecessor to rohypnol.In short, this novella is more like a building block than a particularly good story in itself. It's no wonder that it has inspired movies, tv shows and books galore. By the time the story devolves into droning letters (much the same way Dracula does), its pretty clear why so many of those adaptations take the original story as inspiration, rather than direct source material. Ah well. At least I can say now that I read it.

His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded.

When Stevenson wrote a sentence he turned it into a paragraph and when he wrote a paragraph he turned it into a chapter. This is a short but dense novel (in a good way). I'm amazed at the amount of story that Stevenson was able to squeeze into less than 200 pages. I really enjoy the poetry of the language of this type of literature.

And, yes, the story still holds up. I had my doubts at first (the ending was obviously already spoiled - Thanks, Scooby Doo...) that the story would be relevant, outside of the cultural dualities of Victorian society, but it, nevertheless, held up.

I believe this is the first book about the “split personality” that has ever been written. I loved every page of the book and the narrative form. I must admit I felt a strange liking for Edward Hyde and I felt sad that he and Dr. Henry Jekyll died at the end of the story. However, this is more than a novel, it's a good way to think about the dichotomy between good and evil.

The low rating I give this book is not the author's fault. The story that Stevenson penned is a standard in 19th century science fiction and as good if not better than anything Verne or Wells wrote. At least, that's the way I probably would have felt had it not been spoiled for me. Everyone knows the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde so when the twist was revealed, it was very anticlimactic. I would love to get the perspective of somebody who didn't know the twist; sadly, it's such a part of common knowledge that I don't think I'll see that.

Very entertaining - I wish I could have read it without knowing the spoilers, since it's basically presented as a creepy mystery story, with us only getting Dr. Jekyll's point of view at the end.

In reading this, I unlearned a lot of things I thought I knew. I discovered:

- Jekyll rhymes with treacle. This is the normal Scottish pronunciation, and probably ties into the punnish names (Hyde-hide; Jekyll-seek all).

- Dr. Jekyll isn't the good and pure half of the duo. He's just the normal guy, with both good and bad characteristics. But actually he's pretty evil when you think about it, since he decides it's no fun indulging in baser instincts when you have that pesky conscience, and thus creates an utterly selfish version of himself so he can be a bastard without feeling bad or tarnishing his reputation. So weirdly, of all my pop culture brushes with the story, the time when Ren is split into Evil Ren and Indifferent Ren may actually be the most faithful to the source material!

- Hyde isn't a giant Hulk-style monster. He's short and little, and appears younger than Jekyll. He's also not physically ugly or deformed in any way - he just gives an impression that something Is Very Wrong with him in an indescribable way.

Anyway, I was impressed by Stevenson's artful depiction of evil, from its most banal to full-on murderous violence. I'm sure Hyde is salacious too, but his evil is represented in a much more effective way.

When we first hear a story of him, it's about him bumping into a little girl on the street. She's thrown to the ground and he calmly walks on, stepping on her without a thought. With the difference in mores between Stevenson's culture and ours, he might have chosen a vice that seems quite silly and tame to us, but this account is still chilling, even in 2018.

In fact, I couldn't help draw a connection between Stevenson's idea of anonymous indulgence in baser instincts, and the modern-day internet troll. This story is absolutely fresh and applicable in an age when we have “normal” good citizens going to work, hanging out with friends, parenting their children, volunteering for charities, and then sitting down at the computer and sending people messages like “You deserve to be raped to death, but you're too ugly” behind the safe concealment of their Internet avatars.

All in all, this was a great story - a quick read that retains its creepiness even when you know what's going on from page one. It also provokes thought about what it means to be a good person, how addiction can destroy people, and the usefulness of societal restrictions like reputation and criminal punishment.

Just finished The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson on Audible and wow! It's such an intriguing story. I like how it ended with the different stories from different people, and how it ended with Jekyll. I'm not sure how the text version looks like, but the Audible version narrated by Richard Armitage was well done with the voices changing based on who was talking. It gave me shivers with the smooth transitions between Jekyll and Hyde at the end!

**Read on Audible