While reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for English class, I started thinking about curiosity. It is what made humanity great, what made us better than our stronger monkey brethren. Our invention of tools that suited our needs and the beginnigns of agriculture were all the result of curiosity, wondering how we could make our lives easier. From this incredible force, modern life sprung. But in the novel, curiosity is portrayed very differently. Jekyll simply cannot stop himself from drinking the potion he knows will leave him shattered in the end, simply because he would be eaten alive from the inside out by the need to know what would happen if he had drunk the potion. If curiosity brings us to new heights only to push us off the great elevation we stand upon, does this mean humanity was doomed from the start? Is it really possible for us to truly be happy, or will our need for knowledge be greater than our desire for peace? I can only hope we do not have the same tragic fate as the Doctor. I can only hope we were not created with such an inherent flaw. I can only hope we can accept our relative insignificance and stop feeling the corrosive, destructive need to possess the forbidden knowledge.

Pain is all I know as I fall to the earth in sheer, indescribable pain. This small man who I approached in such peace and happiness has, without reason, begun beating me senseless with his staff. I know not why, partially due to my inability to think with a walking stick halfway into my skull, yet I feel as though I know this man. His pure uncurbed bloodlust and rage are almost familiar to me as I lay here being sped to my death. I am quite sure I have seen this exact same emotion in a far nobler specimen of our race. Comprehension has come to me in an instant, and I realize that this is the released soul of all things evil within a good friend of mine, Dr. Jekyll. And in this instant, I have a quite unfortunately late and unshareable lesson literally pounded into my skull. This evil side of us cannot be freed, because when let loose it will be sure to manifest its malicious will at every opportunity. When we bottle it up inside, it may begin a long and painful corruption of our soul, but this is doubtlessly better than the slow painful deaths we would all experience if evil were released in all of us. Whether this end would be the same as my own agonizingly slow one, I leave to find out the poor man who next attempts to seize the achievement of perfection.

Each footfall of mine rumbles ominously through the cavernous basement lab as I advance towards the old lab tables of the famed Dr. Jekyll. I can't help but feel a creeping fear that seems to radiate from about me in the darkness, as though this laboratory has sinister intentions of its own for me. I move onward to a smaller table with several candles about its perimeter, and on it in the center of a semicircle of the candles is a log. The cover is old and faded, suggesting its use throughout Jekyll's long carrer of experimenting. While I page through it, I see that this is inded the case, with experiments from the time he was no older than twenty to the final experiment that is now suspected to have ended his life. Curiosity spurrs me on to look at the final entry, and when I read the title, I can't help but shudder as I realize he was experimenting with dividing the human soul itself. When I finally read to the bottom of the log entries for this experiment, I see that the final entry says no more than this: "My attempts to become perfect have created a monster unlike any other. Perfection is not to be sought, it is to be feared, for in contrast to any perfect good is a shadow of evil of the same potence."

Author's note: This was simply what came to my mind while reading the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Posting it here for some feedback and hopefully constructive criticism.