The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)

After slogging through Dickens, I wanted a quick read, and this fit the bill.  At only 88 pages, it's an easy one-sitting read.  And a highly worthwhile one, at that.

I would think most are well familiar with the story, so I won't be concerned about spoilers in my review.  Dr. Jekyll has a problem- he lives a double life.  What he wants to do, he feels he must isolate from society; over the years, he develops his public demeanor, while secretly maintaining a very different private one.  He finds, proceeding down this course, the each nature wants to dominate, and despises the other.  He thus sets out to create a drug that will sever the two entirely, and does so- in a sense.  Mr. Hyde is created, and is pure evil.  He can (in the beginning, at least) resort back to Dr. Jekyll easily enough, and so he embarks on an what is, at first, an adventure for him.  He lives a 'free' life as Hyde, doing as he pleases, and unconstrained by society's (or his conscience's) pressures to repress his baser instincts.  After a 'romp', he then reverts to Jekyll and lives his life as an upstanding society man.  He soon realizes, however, that Hyde is taking over and increasingly difficult to turn away, even when no drugs are administered to facilitate the change.  Eventually, it's the death of him.

The last chapter of this book- which, at 22 pages, is a full quarter of the novel- is one of the most amazing discourses regarding the human condition that I've read outside of the Bible.  It's where Jekyll, before he permanently transforms to Hyde one last time, puts down a narrative of his struggle with his natures- his desire for good, and evil- and the war between them.  While I don't wholly agree with all of Stevenson's views, I do agree with the vast majority- that man has two natures in him, that each yearns to be rid of the other, and that nourishing the evil one makes it increasingly difficult to avoid.  He speaks, truly, of the clouded, fading conscience while evil is being committed, and subsequent horror when right senses return.  Of the difficulty of suppressing subsequent sin once initially indulged.  He gets a lot of things right.  This is highly recommended.

Rating: A+