Doctor Jekyll and Mr.Hyde (Dover Thrift) (Paperback)

It goes without saying that the heart of the story revolves around the duality of the human mind. Each of us has a dark side as well as a good side, and the majority of individuals attempt to disguise any bad, uncontrollable aspects of their natures from the public. Dr. Jeckyll had a predilection for thoughts and acts which he and society frowned upon (although what these acts were is never revealed); as he neared middle age, his life became defined by a continuous inner struggle to keep on the straight and narrow path. He often failed, so he came up with the idea of totally separating his evil nature from his good one. Through the use of chemistry, he developed a solution that, when ingested, transformed him into a different persona in both body and mind, one which had free reign to indulge anonymously in those worldly delights Dr. Jeckyll secretly lusted after. He thought that his original persona would then be freed of the guilt of his desires, while his Mr. Hyde persona could satiate himself in performing guilty actions without any moral restraint. As is only natural, the dark side grew stronger as time passed, and the person of Dr. Jeckyll found himself in more of a quandary than he ever dreamed of before giving birth to Mr. Hyde.

Inner conflict between the good and bad in ourselves is something every reader can easily understand, and it is this psychological aspect of Stevenson's famous short novel that accounts for the tale's continuing popularity. It is a quick and absorbing read, but the method of the tale's presentation is a slight weakness in my opinion. We can only watch the human drama from a third person perspective, and I would like to have gotten more deeply inside the mind of Jeckyll and Hyde. Still, this is a classic of literature that will retain its place in popular culture for untold years to come. As for the afterword by Jerome Charyn in the Bantam edition of the book, I must say I could have done without it. It does provide some interesting background on Stevenson, but its psychological assumptions and surmises struck me as overdramatic and groundless. The story of Jeckyll and Hyde stands strongly on its own merits and does not need to be accompanied by psychobabble.

Given that Stevenson was writing when the genre of horror fiction was not recognized as such, it is surprising that "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is cast in the form of a mystery novel. Stevenson invites his readers to try and get ahead of the story, to put the clues together and come to the conclusion. Today it is nearly impossible to pick up this story and not know the "secret," but if you think back to the late 19th-century when this story was written you can get a sense for how Stevenson used the biases and limitations of his readers to his advantage in keeping them from what we might consider to be an obvious conclusion.

More importantly, Stevenson is writing several decades before the writings of Sigmund Freud revolutionized the whole idea of human psychology. Yet we can certainly find evidence of the conscious and subconscious mind of which Freud would write. Stevenson reinforces this metaphor with the block of buildings that divides this particular part of London, with one side representing the civilized world of a respected physician and the other side the squalor of the world inhabited by an inhuman creature who gives in to his every earthly desire. The novella also speaks to the topic of evolution, with Hyde being described as "ape-like," reinforcing the idea that our most human attributes remove us ever further from the category of mere animal.

Of the three classic horror novels, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is the most accessible. Not only because of its shorter length, but also because its evil is more realistic, even in terms of our imagination. We might be unable to reanimate the dead or to become the walking dead, but we can certainly relate to the idea of unleashing the beast buried with us. Even if we could not, we can recognize the "werewolf" in the real world in the form of serial killers who try to show a civilized face to us in public. This is not to say that the novella is simplistic, for Stevenson offers a sophisticated narrative. If this is one of those literary you have never read because you already know the story, then you should take out an evening to sit down and finally get around to reading it.