68 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Do You Know the True Story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde??, July 6, 2004
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I have seen many movie versions of this classic. So, I made the assumption that I knew the true story. Then I read this book. Was my assumption ever wrong!!!
This particular book (published by Signet Classics in Sept. 2003) of less than 150 pages has five parts:
(1) Opening Pages. They include a brief biography of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 to 1894). (Takes up 4% of the book.)
(2) Introductory Essay. This was written by the late, famous Russian author Vladimir Nabokov. (Takes up 20%.)
(3) The Actual Story. Its original title is "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1886). (Takes up 65%.)
(4) Afterword to the Story. It is written by a modern writer. (Takes up 8%.)
(5) Selected Bibliography. Outlines great works by and about R.L. Stevenson. (Takes up 3%.)
The introductory essay was an actual lecture Nabokov gave when he was associate professor at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959. It gives a thorough, detailed analysis of this "seldom read" classic.
The afterword consists of a shorter analysis of this classic by the modern writer Dan Chaon. I felt that this afterword provided valuable insight regarding the story of Jekyll and Hyde.
Chaon sums up the entire story: "The structure of ['Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'] follows a path as indirect and elusive as its multiple narrative voices. With its obliquely recorded incidents, its eyewitness accounts and sealed confessions, it resembles...a [police detective's] casebook--a collection of gathered clues, fragments, through which the clever detective may be able to...project a complete narrative. Perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of this novel [of ten chapters] is that, in fact, there's so much left here for [the reader] to fill in, so many scenes that [the reader] can only imagine. Such a structure creates fertile ground for allegory [a story with symbolic meaning] hunters, and there are indeed many convincing interpretations of this novel...The puzzle-like structure of the novel [which only has eight major male characters] creates a kind of Rorechach test, open to various interpretations." (A Rorechach test is where a person interprets inkblot designs.)
The inspiration of this short novel is said to have come from a dream (or, perhaps more accurately, a nightmare) Stevenson had. His actual writing is amazing and skillful in all chapters. The writing especially of the last two chapters, chapters nine and ten, stood out for me. Here, for example, is his actual description of what happened when somebody observed someone using Dr. Jekyll's concoction: "He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; as I looked there came, I thought, a change--he seemed to swell--his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter--and the next moment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to shield me...[and] my mind submerged in terror."
Finally, the cover of this particular book is interesting. It shows the shadow of a man in a top hat behind a window shade. This can be taken to represent Hyde who is a shadowy character.
In conclusion, this particular book has it all: an introduction by a late, well-known author, an intriguing mystery/horror story by a late, famous nineteenth century author, and an afterword by a gifted, modern writer. Be sure to read this book to learn the true story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!!!
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat Faded With Time But Still Incredibly Influential, July 13, 2006
Published in 1886, THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE was an instant sensation and had a tremendous impact on later generations; it would not be an exaggeration to say that there have been hundreds of stage and film productions drawn either directly or indirectly from the original Robert Louis Stevenson story. Readers who come to the story from these adaptations, however, will very likely be surprised: few of them do more than borrow Stevenson's central concept.
Unlike the numerous stage and film adaptations, Dr. Jekyll is not a young or remarkably handsome man, nor the book does not contain any of the romantic subplots to which its adaptations are prone. At approximately one hundred pages, the story is very direct and extremely well suited to Stevenson's very precise style, which is very clean yet extremely evocative and very readable.
That said, modern readers are unlikely to be shocked by the book. For one thing, the story is too well known; for another, it contains very little of the graphic horror typical of current horror stories. But more than anything else, DR. JEKYLL is very distinctly a novel that draws from the Victorian era, and much of its impact was due to that society's remarkable hypocrisy; it was a world in which appearances were everything and a double life "acceptable" as long as you were not caught at it.
The same concept arises in two other novels from the same era, Bram Stoker's DRACULA and Oscar Wilde's THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, albeit in distinctly different forms. But whereas the Stoker and Wilde novels transcend their era, Stevenson's tale does not, and with the passing of Victorian attitudes the work has lost a great deal of its power to shock. Even so, Stevenson does touch a nerve with his chemically-induced transformation; then as now, drug abuse was a scourge, and in addition to this the work is somewhat similar to Mary Shelly's FRANKENSTEIN in the sense that it anticipates a host of ethical concerns that have become more and more pressing with the passage of time.
Although it has not held up as well as the other titles named, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE is nonetheless unavoidable for any one who has an interest in gothic or horror literature because it had--and continues to have--such a tremendous influence on later works. Stevenson's prose is elegant, it is "an easy read," and I think most contemporary readers will enjoy it if they make the effort to see it within the context of its era.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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