where familiarity breeds ignorance

as is my usual practice, i always make sure that i bring to camp at least one new book to sustain me through the boring periods that the week inevitably brings. this week i brought two: an agatha christie and one very well known piece of work, dr jekyll and mr hyde.

i started with the latter and was midway through the book when a friend at camp asked me what i was reading. i showed him the title and he cringed visibly saying, 'dont you know what it's about already?' to this i replied in the affirmitive and further went to say that i havent actually read the original by stevenson yet and thought it was about time i did even if i did know how it was going to end. he still remained unconvinced, to say the least, and to be honest, i felt a little annoyed by his reaction.

there have been many watered down versions of dr jekyll and mr hyde, both on screen and on the stage since the release of the book. there have even been cartoon reproductions of the show and spoofs of it done on the simpsons during their holloween special. the same can also be said about other classics like shelly's frankenstein and doyle's sherlock holmes. everyone, at some point of their lives, have been introduced to these characters and know what the story is about. but in my opinion, watching or reading reproductions is just not good enough.

dont you want to find out why so many people saught to make movies and spoofs about these stories? what makes them so interesting? sure i know what the story is generally all about, but am i just going to settle for that? a general outline from a reproduction that might not even be true to the original piece? and above all, dont you want to read the original just to know what it really is all about?

i think it is a shame that most of us can acknowledge knowing alice but have never actually stepped through the looking glass.