31 pages • 1 hour read
Robert Louis StevensonThe Bottle Imp
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1891A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Self-Sacrifice for Love
Self-sacrifice is a major theme of this story, which emphasizes the importance of sacrificial love and putting others’ needs before your own. Keawe begins the story as a young and naive man whose greatest desire is adventure and wealth. Though he is not a bad person, he has not faced many trials yet in life and is mainly concerned with achieving his own happiness. When he gains the house through the death of his uncle, he is saddened but still resolves to enjoy it, deciding “I may as well take the good along with the evil” (Paragraph 65). His journey toward self-sacrifice begins when he pursues the bottle a second time to cure his leprosy. Though he is able to attain the cure and marry Kokua, he is miserable because he realizes he has risked damnation to do so. Nothing, not even loving Kokua, seems worth the sacrifice. Though Keawe’s love for Kokua is a positive thing, this turn of events seems to cast doubt on Keawe’s idea that he can take the good of the bottle along with the bad. It seems that the evil of the bottle and the threat of damnation is so great that it might cancel out any good that could come from it. Happiness can only be achieved at the story’s end through sacrificial love on the part of both Keawe and Kokua.
Like Keawe, Kokua must also learn to become selfless. She initially is an innocent young girl but reaches maturity through helping to shoulder Keawe’s burdens. Once she learns that he has risked his soul to marry her, she works to save him. She comes up with a clever plan and leaves their home behind to journey with him to Tahiti and seek a buyer. When this plan fails, she realizes that a greater sacrifice might be required. She risks her soul by buying the bottle to save Keawe. The old man who buys the bottle feels sorry for her and his offer is a moment of temptation. Kokua selflessly refuses to let the old man take the blame, arguing that she is not “so base” to let him be damned in her stead (Paragraph 178). The happy ending for the lovers is achieved once they both have sacrificed for the other. Since each was willing to risk their damnation to save a loved one, they are rewarded in the narrative with a long and happy life together.
Money Can’t Buy Happiness
“The Bottle Imp” imparts the theme that money cannot buy happiness, emphasizing that what is truly valuable in life does not come from financial gain, but rather from love and relationships. The temptation offered by the bottle is the idea that all of one’s earthly desires could be fulfilled. When Keawe first encounters the wealthy old man with the bottle, he is envious of his beautiful home and many fine things. He tells the old man, “if I lived in the like of it, I should be laughing all day long” (Paragraph 6). The old man, however, is envious of Keawe, since the former is not in danger of damnation. Though he seems to have the ideal life, he is in fact miserable.
Keawe learns this lesson for himself when he attains the bottle and his dream house, only to do so through losing his uncle. Even after living in the Bright House, he realizes that he will only be happy when he is with his beloved Kokua. All of his beautiful possessions and his home pale in comparison to being with the person he loves. This echoes the warning of the old man at the story’s beginning: “For, once it is sold, the power goes and the protection; and unless a man remain content with what he has, ill will befall him” (Paragraph 16).
A recurring motif throughout the story is the misery of the owners of the bottle. While they might have endless wealth at their disposal, the fear of damnation constantly lurks. Each character that owns the bottle learns for themselves the danger of using it and comes to realize that having wealth or power means nothing if one is not happy. The lawyer, the Haole who escapes jail, and Lopaka all wish to rid themselves of the bottle quickly.
Ironically, when Keawe is at his most miserable, he and Kokua are in Tahiti and using the bottle daily to give them as much money as they need. Materially, they want for nothing. However, the fine carriages, rich food and drink, and other trappings of wealth are nothing in the face of his terror at dying and losing his soul.
The final lines of the story emphasize that, freed of the bottle, Keawe is “light as the wind” and that he and Kokua can live in peace together without the curse (Paragraph 247). The lovers are able to live out their days together happily not due to having untold power or wealth, but because they understand that their sacrificial love for one another is the true joy of life. “The Bottle Imp” is thus not a traditional rags to riches story, but a tale of learning to count love and friendship as true wealth.
The Reality of Evil
Though “The Bottle Imp” is a humorous story with a happy ending, it repeatedly emphasizes the theme of the reality of evil. Characters in the story, especially the protagonists Keawe and Kokua, are forced to confront their fear of damnation and the real danger represented by the bottle. Initially, Keawe does not seem too frightened by the bottle’s curse and he and Lopaka plan to use it to bring them wealth before quickly disposing of it. However, two incidents early on in the story serve to underscore the reality of the evil they face. The first is the moment when Keawe learns that his uncle has died and that the bottle has granted his wish through the cruelest means possible. This suggests that the power working through it is indeed diabolical and cannot be trusted. Any wish, no matter how innocent, could be granted through dangerous means. The second incident occurs when Lopaka asks to see the imp in the bottle. The sight of him is so horrific that the previously skeptical Lopaka is terrified. He fervently wishes to get rid of the bottle and hopes that he and Keawe are able to escape their encounters.
“The Bottle Imp” contains vivid descriptions of hell which are grounded in realistic detail. Rather than a metaphor, it becomes a real place to the characters through their deeply imagined visions of its flames and agony. After purchasing the bottle, Kokua spends a terrified night wandering the roads: “All that she had heard of hell came back to her; she saw the flames blaze, and she smelt the smoke, and her flesh withered on the coals” (Paragraph 180). These figurative details underscore the idea that hell is not an imaginary place for these characters, but a real danger.
Despite fantastical or religious-based elements like the existence of the magical bottle and a literal devil, all readers could connect to the reality of evil in the world and the fear of death. The bottle represents a supernatural force, but there are plenty of real-world “evils” that occur in Stevenson’s tale. One of these is the danger represented by Keawe’s leprosy, which was an epidemic that caused death and harm throughout Hawaii in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This was an evil that competed with that of the supernatural hell in the narrative, causing the protagonist to re-face potential damnation. Other “evils” of the time include the presence of imperialism in Indigenous communities. This is representative of Stevenson’s personal morals and beliefs, and it is subtly woven into the narrative in the mentions of the past, nefarious owners of the bottle. The lovers in the story confront the evil of the bottle and defeat it through sacrificial love, offering readers a happy ending and a comic way of grappling with the darker aspects of life.
Related Titles
By Robert Louis Stevenson
