This is my first time reading Gothic horror, and it was a fine short read. The main reveal isn’t that dramatic, and I don’t think it was intended to be one by the author either. The book covers also hint at it. I learned later after reading the book that “Jekyll and Hyde” is actually a commonly used phrase.
Even if you weren’t spoilt by the book cover or the common phrase, you start to get a sense of the mystery after reading a few dozen pages, which makes the reveal unsurprising. It is the explanation after the reveal that is far more interesting. Jekyll and Hyde are described as looking so different, so home come they are the same person? How do they transform into one another? and more such interesting questions.
It starts to get interestingly philosophical towards the end. Jekyll wanting to separate the conflicting parts of his nature. He is able to pursue his hidden pleasures in this alternate identity (Hyde) and doesn’t have to worry about being caught because he will return to his original form. Over time, things flip around with Hyde taking over, and Jekyll no longer being able to get back in control because of a rather unfortunate lack of an “impure” substance.
My interpretation of the story is that it tells us not to indulge in our vices. It may start off as being occasional, but it will slowly turn into a terrible habit hard to get rid of. Over time, the repeated indulgence becomes part of our identity, at which point, it may be impossible to stop. Weirdly enough, when I was thinking about this, I actually linked it to James Clear’s identity based habits, where you decide what type of person you want to be, and slowly try to prove to yourself by building habits associated with that type of person. Except ofcourse, in this interpretation, it works the other way around. By repeatedly indulging in our vices, we begin to look at ourselves differently and our identity is taken over by it.
I like Robert Louis Stevenson’s phraseology. I felt that most sentences were dense in meaning - multiple consecutive such sentences, in fact. It makes me admire how so much is expressed in such few sentences. To express the same, I’d have used thrice as many sentences and came across very verbose. Interestingly, this also made it difficult to read in some portions because I had to focus harder in order to comprehend it. I also found it really funny how anyone who described the appearance of Hyde was basically just roasting the hell out of him in a very articulate way.
Read it on Kramena