61 pages
English language
Published Aug. 6, 2003 by Norton.
Dr. Henry Jekyll, fascinated by the dichotomy of good and evil, no longer wants to inhibit his dark side. He concocts a potion to create the alter ego of Mr. Edward Hyde. With the burden of evil placed on Hyde, Jekyll can now take pleasure in his immoral, nefarious fantasies - free of conscience and guilt. It’s when Hyde turns to murder that Jekyll realizes how monstrous his impulses are and how hard they are to suppress.
Exploring the nature of shame, repression, desire, and control, Stevenson’s story has so endured that “a Jekyll and Hyde personality” has become part of our lexicon in understanding our own - sometimes involuntary - duality.
AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to …
Dr. Henry Jekyll, fascinated by the dichotomy of good and evil, no longer wants to inhibit his dark side. He concocts a potion to create the alter ego of Mr. Edward Hyde. With the burden of evil placed on Hyde, Jekyll can now take pleasure in his immoral, nefarious fantasies - free of conscience and guilt. It’s when Hyde turns to murder that Jekyll realizes how monstrous his impulses are and how hard they are to suppress.
Exploring the nature of shame, repression, desire, and control, Stevenson’s story has so endured that “a Jekyll and Hyde personality” has become part of our lexicon in understanding our own - sometimes involuntary - duality.
AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.
When our baser urges are allowed to run free, they end up dominating. Disturbing, even if the 'science' is a bit amusing.
When our baser urges are allowed to run free, they end up dominating. Disturbing, even if the 'science' is a bit amusing.
I was interested in how indirect the exposition worked in this novella, which is mostly told from the point of view of the friends of the main character who start out with very little knowledge with his business. The heinous crimes the Mr. Hyde character commits in public are the only pretext they have for intruding upon Dr. Jeckyll's privacy. Basically it is set up like a mystery story where time is running out on putting together the clues as to what is happening and why. There is pathos in the declining condition of Jeckyll, the horror at the bestial qualities attributed to Hyde, the arcane biological experiments being carried out in the laboratory, it crosses over a number of different speculative genres at once.
There are many dialogue sections and journal entries to carry the exposition, just a few rather brief sections of what we would consider actual action. …
I was interested in how indirect the exposition worked in this novella, which is mostly told from the point of view of the friends of the main character who start out with very little knowledge with his business. The heinous crimes the Mr. Hyde character commits in public are the only pretext they have for intruding upon Dr. Jeckyll's privacy. Basically it is set up like a mystery story where time is running out on putting together the clues as to what is happening and why. There is pathos in the declining condition of Jeckyll, the horror at the bestial qualities attributed to Hyde, the arcane biological experiments being carried out in the laboratory, it crosses over a number of different speculative genres at once.
There are many dialogue sections and journal entries to carry the exposition, just a few rather brief sections of what we would consider actual action. The entire last section is presented in the form of journal entries by the doctor which settle the threads of the mystery and giving an outlet to the emotional anguish he has placed himself in. It makes for a good quick story for someone to read who knows only the film and TV dramatizations of it.
