The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (REVIEW)

A Critic's Meta Review: 4/5

Robert Louis Stevenson needs to pony up some royalties. I don’t care if he’s been dead for over a century and a score (yes - I’m bringing it back, baby); the man owes me my fair share. His most famous work (aside from, perhaps, Treasure Island) is a direct rip-off of my life.

Don’t believe me? I’ll prove it to you.

Every morning I wake up and carefully craft the day’s schedule of meals and snacks. I am talking morsel by morsel - nothing goes in my mouth that I have not explicitly granted myself permission to consume. At least, this is the theory on which my plan rests.

All throughout the day, I remain a strict adherent to my word. I am tempted, many times, to expand the list and include perhaps another bowl of oatmeal, or maybe just a handful of nuts, or, you know what, just a few bites from tomorrow’s apple.

Alas, I am able to avoid falling into the pitfalls of my impulses and exercise good, sound judgment. The discipline is not lacking - at least not between the hours of 7AM and around 10PM.

But then, all of a sudden, something happens.

I am transformed.

Into what, you may ask?

Into a grocery-demolishing monster, that’s what. Indeed, I will stand for minutes with the refrigerator door ajar, scanning arduously in search of something containing enough sugar to satisfy the evil spirit that has taken over my body. At this point, I am no longer the sensible, thoughtful, conscious human being that I was during the honest daylight hours. To quote the infamous J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the H-bomb (who, himself, was quoting the Bhagavad Gita, the text on which I aim to base the way I live my life), in the midnight hour “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”

Destroyer of worlds may be a tad hyperbolic. Destroyer of my own world, or at least the one I have attempted to construct for myself through my daytime pastimes (such as running, biking, boxing, weight training, cooking and eating all that expensive organic stuff, moving my fingers down the fretboard/keyboard), is more accurate. Mr. Hyde takes Dr. Jekyll’s conception of himself and rips it to shreds, furiously. Without even a moment’s thought, Mr. Hyde allows the devil to do his dirt, unrestrained.

By day, I am Dr. Jekyll. By night, I am Mr. Hyde.

Waiting on that check, Bobby boy...