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“"For I see in my members a law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin . . . wretched man that I am!" (Romans 7:23f). I could not help but reflect on the Apostle Paul's famous passage as I finished reading Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Strange case indeed! This has to be one of the more powerful morality tales, perhaps equally haunting to Oscar Wilde's "Portrait of Dorian Gray." Even though the tale bodes darkly, I had to laugh at Stevenson's occasional humor ("If he be Mr. Hyde . . . I shall be Mr. Seek" p.14). However overall Stevenson's message is dark, unraveling near the end - - reaching a crescendo with lines such as "I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man" and "I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen (burden) of our life is bound for ever on man's shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast if off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure." And Stevenson captures the angst of humanity when his protagonist laments being "sold a slave to my original evil" (p.80). Unfortunately, there seems little hope of redemption for Dr. Jekyll, giving this story a nightmarish quality; but one that packs a punch of a message!”
