Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Classics, Fiction, Horror
Robert Louis Stevenson
Penguin
1886
Paperback
88
English
April 24, 2023 April 25, 2023
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Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the original title of a novella written by the famous Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. The work is commonly known today as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London lawyer named John Gabriel Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde.
About the book
Can evil be eradicated from a person? That’s what Dr. Jekyll wanted to do with his experiments. Did he succeed? Maybe, but everything has its consequences.
What I think
This is my second read, but other than the final twist that I knew (and which, I think, everyone knows) I remembered practically nothing of the book.
I must say that I liked it a lot perhaps because I read it with the Fable book club, but I really enjoyed reading it even if the concept behind the book is not that “happy”.
I like the gloomy atmosphere of the entire book, my favorite quote is:
It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of London so deserted.
This novel talks about the duality of human beings or rather the good side and the bad side that coexist in each of us. About how, oftentimes, you can be totally bad, but you can’t be totally good. About how, to be good, a bad part must exist otherwise it would not be logical to be good.
And it is true. If evil didn’t exist, good shouldn’t exist either, or rather, from an empirical and philosophical point of view, this is reality.
Anyway, as I said, I really liked the book, I don’t understand why when you’re at school you don’t like these classics… (even if I understand it a bit, since I’m a mood reader and if I don’t want to read that book, I can’t seem to like it at the moment)
