Even outdoors of supernatural fiction circles, “The Bottle Imp” is amongst Stevenson’s most celebrated brief tales. Its repute stands alongside different perennial classics of the brief kind—Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” Irving’s “The Satan and Tom Walker,” Bierce’s “An Incidence at Owl Creek Bridge,” London’s “To Construct a Fireplace,” and O. Henry’s “The Reward of the Magi.” Like these tales, Stevenson’s story is remembered for its taut suspense, ironic reversals, and unforgettable emotional affect.
At its coronary heart lies the acquainted however endlessly unsettling maxim: watch out what you would like for. The horror just isn’t rooted in grotesque monsters or gothic castles however in human want itself—the gnawing suspicion that our deepest longings, whether or not for wealth, love, or safety, could betray us and wreck the very lives we want to enhance. Whereas tales like “The Monkey’s Paw” or “The Satan and Tom Walker” emphasize greed and its penalties, Stevenson’s story broadens the scope.
Its tragedy grows not solely from the hazard of covetousness but additionally from the facility of affection. Keawe’s decisions, and Kokua’s determined sacrifice, are pushed not by egocentric achieve however by devotion and concern of loss. This makes the story much more poignant: the bottle’s curse destroys not merely as a result of males crave riches, however as a result of even love—the noblest of impulses—can entangle us in damnation. O. Henry’s “Reward of the Magi,” “The Bottle Imp” meditates on sacrifice, however with a darker irony: generosity itself can grow to be a lure, and selflessness can price greater than selfishness ever would.
Stevenson additionally laces the story with a sly irony that hints at historical past and energy. The bottle, mentioned to have handed by way of the fingers of Napoleon and Alexander the Nice, is lowered by the point it reaches Keawe to the possession of poor islanders and drunken vagabonds. Energy, as soon as adorned with the grandeur of emperors, trickles down till it’s not more than a harmful hand-me-down, like a damaged heirloom or a used-up automobile. But its hazard just isn’t diminished. Certainly, its terror lies exactly in its switch: every new proprietor buys aid on the expense of one other, pushing the curse additional alongside till, inevitably, somebody might be left holding it on the finish. The final drop of energy, Stevenson suggests, is all the time poison.
The story’s setting in Hawaii additionally marks an essential departure in Stevenson’s profession. Having left Europe behind, he spent his ultimate years within the South Seas, fascinated by Polynesian life and deeply engaged with native cultures. “The Bottle Imp” displays this era of artistic experimentation, mixing European folks motifs—the Faustian discount, the cursed talisman—with island landscapes and voices.
Students have typically learn the story as a meditation on cultural alternate through the colonial period: the bottle turns into an emblem of Western affect, providing wealth and energy however carrying hidden prices. On this sense, the story just isn’t solely a supernatural fable but additionally a commentary on the perils of imperialism, displaying how items from the “civilized” world typically masks traps of dependence, exploitation, and loss.
There’s additionally a philosophical dimension that resonates with nineteenth-century anxieties. The 1800s had been an age of skepticism, when advances in science, economics, and trade had eroded outdated non secular certainties. Tales of bargains with the satan took on new meanings in a world the place wealth may skyrocket or collapse in a single day, the place industrial fortunes had been constructed on the struggling of laborers, and the place empires expanded by mortgaging the lives of colonized peoples.
“The Bottle Imp” may be learn in opposition to this backdrop: a parable not solely of private greed or love’s risks, however of the ethical money owed that undergird methods of energy. Keawe’s torment comes not solely from the specter of hellfire, however from his participation in a sequence of distress—a recognition that wealth and luxury are too typically bought on the expense of unseen others.
On this method, Stevenson’s story is each intimate and expansive. It captures the anguish of 1 couple caught in a snare of destiny, but it additionally gestures towards the common human predicament: the prices of want, the burden of affection, and the haunting certainty that nothing—whether or not fortune, energy, or happiness—may be had with out somebody, someplace, paying the ultimate worth.
The story begins on the Island of Hawaii, the place a poor however succesful younger man named Keawe desires of seeing the world. After years of exhausting work as a sailor and steersman, he voyages to San Francisco, “a high quality city, with a high quality harbour, and wealthy individuals uncountable.” Wandering by way of its rich districts, Keawe admires the grand homes and wonders, “What high quality homes these are! … how blissful should these individuals be who dwell in them, and take no look after the morrow!”
He quickly notices a smaller however beautiful home, whose “steps shone like silver” and “home windows had been vivid like diamond.” Inside, an older man with a bald head and black beard sits trying sorrowful. The person invitations Keawe in to admire his dwelling. When Keawe marvels, “If I lived within the like of it, I needs to be laughing all day lengthy,” the person sighs and affords to promote him not the home, however an odd bottle—“not a lot larger than a pint,” its milky glass shimmering with “altering rainbow colors.” Inside it, “one thing obscurely moved, like a shadow and a fireplace.”
The person explains that an imp lives inside, granting any want—“love, fame, cash, homes like this home, ay, or a metropolis like this metropolis”—however with one horrible situation: “if a person die earlier than he sells it, he should burn in hell endlessly.” Worse nonetheless, the bottle “can’t be offered in any respect, except offered at a loss.” Initially value tens of millions, it has been handed by way of generations, every time for much less, till the person himself purchased it for ninety {dollars}. He affords it to Keawe for 50 (slightly below $1,800 in 2025 buying energy).
Skeptical, Keawe checks it: “Imp of the bottle … I would like my fifty {dollars} again.” Immediately, the cash reappear in his pocket. The transaction full, the person gleefully dismisses him: “The satan go together with you for me!”Keawe quickly realizes he can’t destroy or discard the bottle—it “jumped on the ground like a baby’s ball,” and when he leaves it behind, it mysteriously reappears in his pocket. Disturbed, he confides in his buddy Lopaka, a shipmate. Lopaka urges him to make use of the bottle’s energy: “You might be positive of the difficulty, and also you had higher have the revenue within the discount.” Keawe needs for a fantastic home overlooking the Kona coast, “flowers within the backyard, glass within the home windows, photos on the partitions, and toys and high quality carpets on the tables.”
Upon their return to Hawaii, Keawe learns that his uncle and cousin have died, leaving him a fortune and land “on the mountain-side—a little bit method south of Hookena.” Lopaka exclaims, “And right here is the cash for the home!” Keawe, uneasy however resigned, permits the dream home to be constructed. When it’s completed, it surpasses all his expectations: “Phrases can’t utter it … it’s higher than I dreamed, and I’m sick with satisfaction.”
True to his phrase, Lopaka buys the bottle from Keawe, for he too needs to check its energy. When the hideous imp briefly seems—“swift as a lizard”—each males are struck dumb with terror. Lopaka takes the bottle away, and Keawe rejoices, “glory to God that he himself was escaped out of that hassle.”
Keawe enjoys his new dwelling—recognized all through Kona because the “Vibrant Home”—dwelling in “perpetual pleasure” till, getting back from a go to to Kailua, he meets a fantastic younger lady bathing by the shore. Her title is Kokua, daughter of Kiano, not too long ago returned from Oahu. Captivated, Keawe confesses, “I noticed your eyes, that are like the celebs, and my coronary heart went to you as swift as a chook.” Inside days, they’re engaged, and Keawe rides dwelling singing blissfully.
However pleasure turns to horror when, undressing that evening, he discovers an odd, tough patch on his pores and skin—the signal of leprosy (then a raging epidemic within the islands). “What unsuitable have I accomplished … that I ought to have encountered Kokua … and now see all my hopes break, in a second, like a chunk of glass?” he laments. Refusing to hazard her, he vows by no means to marry and determines to hunt out the bottle once more.
Touring to Honolulu, Keawe searches desperately. One wealthy man after one other proves to have owned the bottle and offered it at a loss, till lastly he finds a pale, determined younger Haole who confesses that he purchased it for 2 cents. When Keawe hears this, “the phrases died upon his tongue;” anybody who purchased it now may by no means resell it, for no smaller coin exists. The Haole begs him, “For God’s sake purchase it! … I used to be mad after I purchased it at that worth.” Keawe, pondering solely of Kokua, replies, “You suppose I may hesitate with love in entrance of me?” He pays one cent and desires to be cured. Immediately his pores and skin is restored to well being.
However his triumph turns to dread. “He cared naught for the [cure of his leprosy], and little sufficient for Kokua; … he had no higher hope however to be a cinder for ever within the flames of hell.” Returning dwelling, he marries Kokua and lives outwardly blissful, but haunted by visions of “the crimson hearth burning within the bottomless pit.”
Ultimately, Kokua notices his gloom: “If you lived alone in your Vibrant Home, you had been the phrase of the island for a contented man; … then you definately wedded poor Kokua … and from that day you haven’t smiled.” Keawe confesses the complete story. Horrified however devoted, Kokua cries, “No man may be misplaced as a result of he cherished Kokua … I shall prevent with these fingers, or perish in your organization.” She remembers that in France there exists a smaller coin—the centime, value a fifth of a cent—and devises a plan: “Allow us to go to the French islands; there we have now 4 centimes, three centimes, two centimes, one centime; 4 doable gross sales to return and go on; and two of us to push the discount.”
They journey to Tahiti, the place they faux to be wealthy whereas secretly making an attempt to promote the bottle. But individuals both chuckle or recoil in concern: “Catholics crossed themselves as they glided by … and all individuals started with one accord to disengage themselves from their advances.” The couple grows determined, haunted by the sight of “the shadow hovering within the midst.”
One evening Kokua wakes to seek out Keawe gone and hears him moaning in non secular despair. Realizing his torment, she resolves to behave. “A love for a love, and let mine be equalled with Keawe’s! A soul for a soul, and be it mine to perish!” She finds an outdated man coughing on the street, persuades him to purchase the bottle from Keawe for 4 centimes so she will be able to purchase it again for 3. The person warns, “If you happen to meant falsely … God would strike you lifeless,” however she insists, “He would! … Give me the bottle.”
Kokua returns dwelling with the bottle hidden below her costume, whispering to her sleeping husband, “If you wake will probably be your flip to sing and chuckle. However for poor Kokua … no extra sleep, no extra delight, whether or not in earth or heaven.”
When Keawe awakes cured and joyful, he mocks the “outdated reprobate” who should now be damned, saying, “At three will probably be fairly inconceivable … whoever has that bottle now will carry it to the pit.” Kokua, torn by guilt, murmurs, “Is it not a horrible factor to save lots of oneself by the everlasting wreck of one other?” However Keawe, offended and ashamed, accuses her of disloyalty and storms out.
Ingesting with a rough sailor—a bo’solar—he turns into suspicious of Kokua’s unhappiness. Returning dwelling secretly, he spies by way of the door and sees her laying on the ground with the cursed bottle sitting there beside her. Realizing the reality—“It’s she who has purchased it”—he leaves in anguish, pretending cheer in order to not alarm her. Then he offers the bo’solar two centimes, instructing him to purchase the bottle from Kokua for that worth and promote it again to Keawe for one, warning: “The person who has that bottle goes to hell.”
The sailor agrees however, as soon as he possesses it, refuses to half with it: “It is a fairly good bottle, that is … I’m positive you shan’t have it for one.” Laughing, he drinks and staggers away—“and there goes the bottle out of the story.”
Keawe races dwelling “mild because the wind,” and he and Kokua are reunited. The story closes merely: “Nice was their pleasure that evening; and nice, since then, has been the peace of all their days within the Vibrant Home.”
“The Bottle Imp’s” energy to unsettle, transfer, and disturb lies in its emotional accessibility. Few supernatural tales reduce so near the uncooked nerve of human desperation. Each individual has confronted moments the place the burden of misfortune pressed down so closely that escape—at any price—appeared definitely worth the threat. Whether or not foreclosures, chapter, a devastating sickness, divorce, infidelity, the lack of a cherished one, or the suffocating grasp of poverty, such experiences ignite in us a savage eager for reprieve.
In these moments, the temptation to barter away the soul for aid feels chillingly believable. Stevenson knew this and crafted a narrative that resonates with our shared recognition: the want that “all of this might simply magically go away” can by no means be purchased cheaply. Destiny calls for its worth, and, as custom has lengthy reminded us, the satan all the time collects. This is the reason the “Take care of the Satan” motif is so enduring. King Midas’ contact gave him immeasurable wealth however rendered him a pariah. Achilles gained unmatched energy solely below the shadow of early demise.
Adam and Eve, like Faust, bartered innocence for information and paid dearly for the alternate. Dorian Grey, Narcissus, and Adonis found the horrible burden of magnificence. Musicians reminiscent of Paganini, Tartini, Tommy Johnson, and Robert Johnson had been whispered to have traded their souls for genius. Folklore echoes the identical warning by way of figures just like the Miller’s daughter in “Rumpelstiltskin,” Jack O’Lantern, or the Little Mermaid, who discount for fleeting positive aspects solely to endure when the debt comes due. Such tales should not confined to anyone nation: they’re common, crossing continents and centuries, as a result of they replicate an innate understanding of the human situation.
Stevenson, nevertheless, reshapes this acquainted discount into one thing subtler and extra intimate. The place many “Faustian” narratives give attention to ambition, self-importance, or greed, “The Bottle Imp” narrows in on love itself—its magnificence, its terror, and its tragic ironies. Keawe, the story’s protagonist, might need resisted temptation had been it not for his love for Kokua; his want to safe her happiness drives him deeper into the bottle’s snare. Likewise, Kokua’s personal sacrifice—agreeing to consign her soul to hell in her husband’s stead—springs from an unshakable devotion that borders on martyrdom. Her act of affection, nevertheless, brings no peace. As a substitute, it leaves Keawe condemned to a dwelling hell as soon as he realizes what she has accomplished.
On this bitter twist, Stevenson anticipates the paradoxical sacrifices in O. Henry’s “The Reward of the Magi”: love transforms into ache, generosity into wreck, and devotion right into a lure extra dreadful than selfishness ever may very well be. This theme—the darkish underside of affection—is what units Stevenson’s story other than his extra acquainted works. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll is simply too proud to repent; in “The Physique Snatcher,” Fettes is simply too hardened and cynical; in “Markheim,” repentance comes solely on the worth of life itself. Keawe, in distinction, finds an unbelievable reprieve.
The story introduces the irreverent mariner, a determine who casually inherits the curse and relieves Keawe of damnation. The reprieve is razor-thin, however it grants the lovers a second likelihood, a component of grace uncommon in Stevenson’s darker fiction. But even this aid carries unease. The mariner’s indifference raises unsettling questions: is damnation much less terrifying if one doesn’t concern it? Can evil be neutralized by irreverence? Stevenson leaves these questions tantalizingly unresolved, including a word of ambiguity that complicates the story’s ethical.
Critics have typically famous how “The Bottle Imp” blends European folklore with Polynesian settings and sensibilities. Written throughout Stevenson’s time within the South Seas, the story displays his fascination with cultural hybridity: the imp itself derives from Western folklore, however its legend is transplanted to Hawaii, making a cross-cultural fable about want and consequence. Some students learn this fusion as Stevenson’s commentary on colonialism and world alternate—how cultural “bargains” between the West and native societies may likewise conceal devastating prices. Others emphasize the story’s proto-existential qualities: Keawe’s battle embodies the trendy dilemma of selection, accountability, and the boundaries of human management in a world the place likelihood and destiny intertwine. In the end, the story underscores a common fact: watch out what you would like for, and above all, study to be content material with what you might have.
But in contrast to many cautionary fables, Stevenson tempers the message with tenderness. The lovers are scarred however not destroyed, their devotion examined by hearth but nonetheless intact. The horror stays—the potential of everlasting damnation, the specter of sacrifice turned futile—however so too does the reminder that love, even when tragic, may be redemptive. That is what offers “The Bottle Imp” its endurance. It isn’t merely a morality story of greed punished or ambition humbled. It’s a story of how love itself—our most selfless, human, and delightful impulse—can grow to be the very factor that imperils us. In its mingling of folklore and tragedy, terror and tenderness, Stevenson’s fable continues to echo throughout cultures and ages, as haunting at the moment as when it was first advised.
