[I reread this book to see if I wanted to study it at GCSE.]
It was interesting reading this novella two years after I read it for the first time. I think I picked up on a lot of themes, jokes, and literary devices that I missed when I first read it. I found, for example, that Stevenson’s characters (of whom he only made use of a few important ones, rather than having lots of insignificant characters) were very much multifaceted; even Mr Utterson, who externally gives an air of unimaginativeness and ignorance, is a character greatly troubled by the struggles of his friends which he desperately tries to understand. Indeed, it is this very ignorance surrounding Dr Jekyll’s predicament which makes Utterson so interesting. The story revolves around him, so the readers only know as much about things as he does. Stevenson even ends the book with the statements of Lanyon and Jekyll after they were given to Utterson, so we as readers finally understand the situation at the very same time that Utterson does, as he reads the statements.
On the whole, this is a gloomy, mysterious, but highly engaging thriller that just keeps getting better the more I read and analyse it.