OBSERVATIONS

First, I note a few surface details.

Outline
- Rising action – Keawe buys the imp and later sells it
- Crisis – Keawe again buys the imp although he doubts he can sell it
- Resolution – a sailor buys the imp from Keawe

The story centers on possession of the imp (primarily by Keawe, as noted above).  The full progression of ownership follows:

Ownership
- Old man
- Keawe
- Keawe's friend
- Unspecified others
- Keawe
- Kokua
- Sailor
- Keawe (attempted; sailor refused)

The motivations of the owners varies:

Motivation**
- Old man, Keawe (first), Keawe’s friend, others – reward
- Keawe (second) – reward
- Kokua –love
- Sailor – reward
- Keawe (attempted) – love

Note the relationship between these motives and the story arc.  Reward drives Keawe’s first two purchases (rising action, crisis), but love drives the third (before resolution).  Observe also the twin kinds of reward compelling the early purchases.  The first reward: obtaining prosperity; the second reward: preserving prosperity (including Kokua).

ANALYSIS

The story’s specifics (ownership and motivation) stage these events:

- Desire can reward (Keawe seeks prosperity and love and is satisfied.)
- Desire can curse (In his quest, Keawe uses the imp.)
- Reward brings uncertainty (Banishment threatens all Keawe’s gains.)
- Love absorbs curse (Kokua buys imp from Keawe.)
- Curse will destroy (Someone must bear imp’s damnation.)


These dichotomies follow:
- Reward is tarnished without the curse (by uncertainty) or with the curse (by destruction).
- One can avoid the curse but not uncertainty.+
- Love can deliver from the curse but cannot escape from the curse.

(+Note: This is because Stevenson portrays Keawe’s desire as a constant from the story’s beginning.  His unavoidable desire leads him to navigate the other events of the story.)


Two final questions:
- Does Stevenson present an ideal choice to resolve the story’s dichotomies?
- Does the imp simply represent the curse or something more?

First, would Stevenson moralize?  I presume the possibility, considering his dramatic shift from a Victorian upbringing to a life of travel and ensuing love of the islander lifestyle (the backdrop for the short story). First, recall the two motives (reward or love) and the consistent negative conseqeunces (uncertainty, curse, destruction).  All of these occurred both with or without a connection to the imp.  Keawe pursued the good life before meeting the imp’s owner and in the period of freedom from its grasp. Likewise, his love for Kokua began without connection to the imp and continued long after.  I summarize all these possible combinations in the following chart:

Choices

REWARD
1. Without imp: uncertainty
2. With imp: curse

LOVE
3. Toward the cursed: destruction
4. Toward the uncursed: no destruction

The story progresses from a focus on reward (first half) to a focus on love (second half).  The last option (love without destruction) is ideal; every other option entails some loss.  Even Kokua’s and Keawe’s choices to love each other by taking back the curse is bittersweet.  Each one’s sacrifice removes the other’s greatest source of happiness, an end that could have been avoided if Keawe had never bought the imp.  The implied lesson?  Avoid choices now that will sabotage love’s good intentions later.

The surprise ending may add an additional message.  If the story warns against complicating love, why does it provide an escape hatch, the drunken sailor who accepts damnation and buys the bottle?  Stevenson could simply be softening the blow of his cautionary tale.  If so, why did he include the elaborate curse that necessitated such an ending? I think the injection of a supernatural temptation portrays real life: wild possibilities coupled with high consequences.  The ending modifies the imaginary scenario to convey another reality: though love cannot erase a damning past, somehow, escape is possible.

If the supernatural elements comment on life, the imp itself may also have a specific meaning.  The unusual law of the imp (sell for less or receive damnation) makes it a constantly growing threat.  Its sinister descriptions (“dark,” “fiery,” etc) and concealed evil (glancing in the bottle stuns the owner with horror) also portray the imp as a potent living force.  Perhaps Stevenson portrays imperfection and evil in humanity as this palpable reality, present in the world and available as a means of man’s advancement and destruction.  As an advocate of Semoan rights who lived in the islands during multiple colonial power-struggles, he vividly observed evil’s corrupting power.  He knew that the world often suffers when people allow the end to justify the means.  And when those people are us—the otherwise kind-hearted Keawes—Stevenson knew that the fiend within us doesn’t have to win in the end.

Gets no love the one who doesn't love.
It's not Karma, but simple logic.
Even if he does, it's a sort of odds,
Making the canon candid.

It's not Karma, but simple logic;
The misanthrope is alone -
Who doesn't like water, will suffocate in,
Who doesn't like life, will be perishing in.

The misanthrope is alone.
This is all a matter of nature-
One may hide in a mass like serpent,
Still being poisonous, threatening.

This is all a matter of nature;
The old song of yin and yang-
Darkness isn't overthrown by brightness,
But they fulfill the scheme of destiny.

The old song of yin and yang-
The side uncursed by goodness
Is the side blessed with senselessness,
Extreme plainness and severity.

The side uncursed by goodness
Fulfills the dark side of the bright -
Without looking for doing the right
Since it's all self-implemented.

Fulfilling the dark side of the bright,
Giving chance for the light,
And bearing all the dark of the moon,
He may be a hero, the antigone.

Giving chance for the light,
Getting no love while another does,
We - people - serve perfect bad examples
For there's no hero without Antihero.

Getting no love while another does,
Even if getting that's out of odds;
Darkness isn't overthrown by brightness,
But each fulfills a scheme in destiny.

We've been and we'll be gone even as antigone.

in the few moments
before dreamland crashed into reality
the skies glittered like cities of light

there was the sight of your bright eyes
admiring in the soft candlelight
the silhouette of your finger

tracing the constellations as
you shared a story of dusk and dawn
leading to the promises of a forever

which rolled from your tongue and became
the only words that ever mattered as much as the
"of course, i care," which you melded into lullabies

that repelled the terrors of loneliness
of wars in the heavens and monsters in the dark
your smile radiated light and

in the way your warmth surrounded me
you became young apollo
and i, your uncursed, loving daphne

Death where is thy sting
when I am already stung,
by lips that laugh and speak and sing
the words once held by muted tongue.

For lo no light from window broke
no Juliet nor waining moon,
just honest words of love were spoke
that gave my heart a brand new tune.

So slings and arrows do thy worst
and misfortune come as may,
for here at last am I uncursed
as in her arms I softly lay.

Let scholars say he was the bard
and all his works a work of art,
but I would rather be fool hard
and know I am her work of heart.

For Thee I have sworn to render from the sovereign sun
a soul's worth; burnished by oblivion's tongue
and stars uncursed ... a bounty of beloved life; once spun
then unmade, and cunningly reversed. a song sung.
a belle play. a bell
rung.

For Thee, I measure the Night's dark, by hand - and
Love by mouth... I come
to heap sweetness upon the waters -
of your thighs, and glide bidden to the hilt of your Delta
like the mighty Mississippi to a blind oyster... for there; I cloister -
in the Secret Gardens of your Restlessness like an untamed
priest.

with an ordained
kiss.