40. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson The idea behind Jekyll and Hyde, that every person actually has dual, or multiple selves, always interested me. Though Stevenson uses this premise to divide humans, or specifically men, as there are no female characters to speak of (though that itself adds to discussion), into moral opposites, I would like to take the theory in a more complicated direction. I don't believe most people contain two innate selves, a good and a bad, but rather that people do have slightly differentiated personalities within them (and the degree of separation depends on the person), that have different motivations and temperaments, none of which are necessarily good or evil. I think Stevenson foresaw this way of thinking, and the story does tell us that most people are not quite so morally binary as Jekyll. The protagonist Mr. Utterson, in fact, from whose point of view proceeds the first part of the story, for those not familiar ...
Life, Books, and SFF