Stevenson, Robert Louis - Biography and Works

Robert Louis Stevenson's early life

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850. The impatience for his parent's religion led to painful clashes with his father. He began to suffer from a respiratory illness so he went in France, there he met Fanny Osburne, an American lady separated from her husband, and they married her. He wrote many works like Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, The Master of Ballantrae, In the South Seas and Weir of Hermiston. He died in 1894.

Stevenson's literary themes

For Stevenson the novel was a flight into adventure where human beings escape from the incidents of everyday. He belief in predestination and one of his great them is the conflict between good and evil and this is at the base of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, a moral allegory and a thriller, a psychological study and a horror story. He deepened psychological analysis and most of his stories are based on one character speaking in the first person. He was a novelist, a poet and wrote many letters.

Plot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde talks about Dr. Jekyll who studying the human psyche, creates a potion that can separate the two natures of the human soul, the good and the evil. His personality is divided into two parts and can’t revert. The bad side is called Edward Hyde, a strong and bad person that makes every iniquity. When Dr. Jekyll is transformed back, he can’t live like himself so orders his servant to obey Hyde. Later the bad part takes over and he committed suicide with poison to avoid being caught by the police.

Treasure Island or Sea Cook

It has one of best known book for young readers since its publication in the literary magazine Young Folks from 1881 to 1882.
It also had a big impact in how pirates, treasure and the oceans are seen and imagined in the modern era (let’s think about Peter Pan or Pirates of the Caribbean).
For this reason, a lot of adaptation of this novel were made during the years.
For example, in the 19th century, it inspired plays in the theatre; from 1912 movies that recreated and reinterpreted Stevenson’s story were shot; in 1938 Treasure Island was read in the radio by Orson Welles, who was a relevant figure of the American cinema, and so on.

As a matter of fact, the plot contains a variety of iconographic scenes that can be easily transported from the paper of the book to an audio-visual product; moreover, the adventurous nature of the novel unravels a succession of scenes and events that creates a fast pace and a flash of emotions which are conducive to capturing the viewer's attention.
The main character is James Hawkings who has just started his life among pirates because he found out a map by chance.
The all navigated aboard the ship called Hispaniola to the Caribbeans to find the treasure but it wasn’t a simple undertaking because of frequent mutinies, broken alliances and pacts, duels and tricks to escape and deceive.