Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one I can talk about without worrying whether I'm giving anything away. For better or for worse, we all come to this novel already knowing what the twist ending is going to be, which is a bit of a pity.
I tried to read it with blinders on, as if this were a new novel I'd never heard of, which is a difficult thing to do. The first thing that becomes apparent is that (as the title implies), Stevenson has structured the story something like a mystery novel, in which we don't know the connection between Jekyll and Hyde until the last pages. On the other hand, a reader can never penetrate the mystery unless he already knows the answer -- there's no rational answer to be found in the text.
And I think that's ultimately part of what drives this story -- the limits of rationality. Jekyll's rationality holds Hyde in check (as our rationality holds our internal Hydes in check), but cannot kill him. Further, although we see Jekyll's evil side in Hyde, we never see a wholly good side. For dramatic purposes, perhaps, a wholly good character is not so interesting, but there are probably ways around that. Rather, I think that it's an essential part of the somewhat pessimistic point of view of the story; although an evil side can exist by itself, it's not really clear what a completely good side would even look like. The Jekyll/Hyde dichotomy is not so much good/evil as it is rational/evil. And yet it's Jekyll's rationality that leads him to freeing Hyde.
For such a short book, there's a lot to think about packed into its pages.
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