Robert Louis Stevenson's The Bottle Imp: A Detailed Summary and Literary Analysis
- Michael Kellermeyer
- 4 minutes ago
- 11 min read
Even outside of supernatural fiction circles, “The Bottle Imp” is among Stevenson’s most celebrated short stories. Its reputation stands alongside other perennial classics of the short form—Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker,” Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” London’s “To Build a Fire,” and O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.” Like these tales, Stevenson’s story is remembered for its taut suspense, ironic reversals, and unforgettable emotional impact.
At its heart lies the familiar but endlessly unsettling maxim: be careful what you wish for. The horror is not rooted in grotesque monsters or gothic castles but in human desire itself—the gnawing suspicion that our deepest longings, whether for wealth, love, or security, may betray us and ruin the very lives we wish to improve. Whereas stories like “The Monkey’s Paw” or “The Devil and Tom Walker” emphasize greed and its consequences, Stevenson’s tale broadens the scope.
Its tragedy grows not only from the danger of covetousness but also from the power of love. Keawe’s choices, and Kokua’s desperate sacrifice, are driven not by selfish gain but by devotion and fear of loss. This makes the story far more poignant: the bottle’s curse destroys not merely because men crave riches, but because even love—the noblest of impulses—can entangle us in damnation. O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi,” “The Bottle Imp” meditates on sacrifice, but with a darker irony: generosity itself can become a trap, and selflessness can cost more than selfishness ever would.
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Stevenson also laces the tale with a sly irony that hints at history and power. The bottle, said to have passed through the hands of Napoleon and Alexander the Great, is reduced by the time it reaches Keawe to the possession of poor islanders and drunken vagabonds. Power, once adorned with the grandeur of emperors, trickles down until it is no more than a dangerous hand-me-down, like a broken heirloom or a used-up car. Yet its danger is not diminished. Indeed, its terror lies precisely in its transfer: each new owner buys relief at the expense of another, pushing the curse further along until, inevitably, someone will be left holding it at the end. The last drop of power, Stevenson suggests, is always poison.
The story’s setting in Hawaii also marks an important departure in Stevenson’s career. Having left Europe behind, he spent his final years in the South Seas, fascinated by Polynesian life and deeply engaged with local cultures. “The Bottle Imp” reflects this period of creative experimentation, blending European folk motifs—the Faustian bargain, the cursed talisman—with island landscapes and voices.
Scholars have often read the story as a meditation on cultural exchange during the colonial era: the bottle becomes a symbol of Western influence, offering wealth and power but carrying hidden costs. In this sense, the tale is not only a supernatural fable but also a commentary on the perils of imperialism, showing how gifts from the “civilized” world often mask traps of dependence, exploitation, and loss.
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There is also a philosophical dimension that resonates with nineteenth-century anxieties. The 1800s were an age of skepticism, when advances in science, economics, and industry had eroded old religious certainties. Tales of bargains with the devil took on new meanings in a world where wealth could skyrocket or collapse overnight, where industrial fortunes were built on the suffering of laborers, and where empires expanded by mortgaging the lives of colonized peoples.
“The Bottle Imp” can be read against this backdrop: a parable not only of personal greed or love’s dangers, but of the moral debts that undergird systems of power. Keawe’s torment comes not only from the threat of hellfire, but from his participation in a chain of misery—a recognition that wealth and comfort are too often purchased at the expense of unseen others.
In this way, Stevenson’s story is both intimate and expansive. It captures the anguish of one couple caught in a snare of fate, yet it also gestures toward the universal human predicament: the costs of desire, the burden of love, and the haunting certainty that nothing—whether fortune, power, or happiness—can be had without someone, somewhere, paying the final price.
SUMMARY
The tale begins on the Island of Hawaii, where a poor but capable young man named Keawe dreams of seeing the world. After years of hard work as a sailor and steersman, he voyages to San Francisco, “a fine town, with a fine harbour, and rich people uncountable.” Wandering through its wealthy districts, Keawe admires the grand houses and wonders, “What fine houses these are! … how happy must those people be who dwell in them, and take no care for the morrow!”
He soon notices a smaller but exquisite house, whose “steps shone like silver” and “windows were bright like diamond.” Inside, an older man with a bald head and black beard sits looking sorrowful. The man invites Keawe in to admire his home. When Keawe marvels, “If I lived in the like of it, I should be laughing all day long,” the man sighs and offers to sell him not the house, but a strange bottle—“not much bigger than a pint,” its milky glass shimmering with “changing rainbow colours.” Within it, “something obscurely moved, like a shadow and a fire.”
The man explains that an imp lives inside, granting any wish—“love, fame, money, houses like this house, ay, or a city like this city”—but with one terrible condition: “if a man die before he sells it, he must burn in hell forever.” Worse still, the bottle “cannot be sold at all, unless sold at a loss.” Originally worth millions, it has been passed through generations, each time for less, until the man himself bought it for ninety dollars. He offers it to Keawe for fifty (just under $1,800 in 2025 purchasing power).
Skeptical, Keawe tests it: “Imp of the bottle … I want my fifty dollars back.” Instantly, the coins reappear in his pocket. The transaction complete, the man gleefully dismisses him: “The devil go with you for me!”Keawe soon realizes he cannot destroy or discard the bottle—it “jumped on the floor like a child’s ball,” and when he leaves it behind, it mysteriously reappears in his pocket. Disturbed, he confides in his friend Lopaka, a shipmate. Lopaka urges him to use the bottle’s power: “You are sure of the trouble, and you had better have the profit in the bargain.” Keawe wishes for a beautiful house overlooking the Kona coast, “flowers in the garden, glass in the windows, pictures on the walls, and toys and fine 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 way south of Hookena.” Lopaka exclaims, “And here is the money for the house!” Keawe, uneasy but resigned, allows the dream house to be built. When it is finished, it surpasses all his expectations: “Words cannot utter it … it is better than I dreamed, and I am sick with satisfaction.”
True to his word, Lopaka buys the bottle from Keawe, for he too desires to test its power. When the hideous imp briefly appears—“swift as a lizard”—both men are struck dumb with terror. Lopaka takes the bottle away, and Keawe rejoices, “glory to God that he himself was escaped out of that trouble.”
Keawe enjoys his new home—known throughout Kona as the “Bright House”—living in “perpetual joy” until, returning from a visit to Kailua, he meets a beautiful young woman bathing by the shore. Her name is Kokua, daughter of Kiano, recently returned from Oahu. Captivated, Keawe confesses, “I saw your eyes, which are like the stars, and my heart went to you as swift as a bird.” Within days, they are engaged, and Keawe rides home singing blissfully.
But joy turns to horror when, undressing that night, he discovers a strange, rough patch on his skin—the sign of leprosy (then a raging epidemic in the islands). “What wrong have I done … that I should have encountered Kokua … and now see all my hopes break, in a moment, like a piece of glass?” he laments. Refusing to endanger her, he vows never to marry and determines to seek out the bottle again.
Traveling to Honolulu, Keawe searches desperately. One rich man after another proves to have owned the bottle and sold it at a loss, until finally he finds a pale, desperate young Haole who confesses that he bought it for two cents. When Keawe hears this, “the words died upon his tongue;” anyone who bought it now could never resell it, for no smaller coin exists. The Haole begs him, “For God’s sake buy it! … I was mad when I bought it at that price.” Keawe, thinking only of Kokua, replies, “You think I could hesitate with love in front of me?” He pays one cent and wishes to be cured. Instantly his skin is restored to health.
But his triumph turns to dread. “He cared naught for the [cure of his leprosy], and little enough for Kokua; … he had no better hope but to be a cinder for ever in the flames of hell.” Returning home, he marries Kokua and lives outwardly happy, yet haunted by visions of “the red fire burning in the bottomless pit.”
Eventually, Kokua notices his gloom: “When you lived alone in your Bright House, you were the word of the island for a happy man; … then you wedded poor Kokua … and from that day you have not smiled.” Keawe confesses the entire story. Horrified but devoted, Kokua cries, “No man can be lost because he loved Kokua … I shall save you with these hands, or perish in your company.” She recalls that in France there exists a smaller coin—the centime, worth a fifth of a cent—and devises a plan: “Let us go to the French islands; there we have four centimes, three centimes, two centimes, one centime; four possible sales to come and go on; and two of us to push the bargain.”
They travel to Tahiti, where they pretend to be rich while secretly trying to sell the bottle. Yet people either laugh or recoil in fear: “Catholics crossed themselves as they went by … and all persons began with one accord to disengage themselves from their advances.” The couple grows desperate, haunted by the sight of “the shadow hovering in the midst.”
One night Kokua wakes to find Keawe gone and hears him moaning in spiritual despair. Realizing his torment, she resolves to act. “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 old man coughing in the street, persuades him to buy the bottle from Keawe for four centimes so she can buy it back for three. The man warns, “If you meant falsely … God would strike you dead,” but she insists, “He would! … Give me the bottle.”
Kokua returns home with the bottle hidden under her dress, whispering to her sleeping husband, “When you wake it will be your turn to sing and laugh. But for poor Kokua … no more sleep, no more delight, whether in earth or heaven.”
When Keawe awakes cured and joyful, he mocks the “old reprobate” who must now be damned, saying, “At three it will be quite impossible … whoever has that bottle now will carry it to the pit.” Kokua, torn by guilt, murmurs, “Is it not a terrible thing to save oneself by the eternal ruin of another?” But Keawe, angry and ashamed, accuses her of disloyalty and storms out.
Drinking with a coarse sailor—a bo’sun—he becomes suspicious of Kokua’s sadness. Returning home secretly, he spies through the door and sees her laying on the floor with the cursed bottle sitting there beside her. Realizing the truth—“It is she who has bought it”—he leaves in anguish, pretending cheer so as not to alarm her. Then he gives the bo’sun two centimes, instructing him to buy the bottle from Kokua for that price and sell it back to Keawe for one, warning: “The man who has that bottle goes to hell.”
The sailor agrees but, once he possesses it, refuses to part with it: “This is a pretty good bottle, this is … I’m sure you shan’t have it for one.” Laughing, he drinks and staggers away—“and there goes the bottle out of the story.”
Keawe races home “light as the wind,” and he and Kokua are reunited. The tale closes simply: “Great was their joy that night; and great, since then, has been the peace of all their days in the Bright House.”
ANALYSIS
“The Bottle Imp’s” power to unsettle, move, and disturb lies in its emotional accessibility. Few supernatural tales cut so close to the raw nerve of human desperation. Every person has faced moments where the weight of misfortune pressed down so heavily that escape—at any cost—seemed worth the risk. Whether foreclosure, bankruptcy, a devastating illness, divorce, infidelity, the loss of a loved one, or the suffocating grasp of poverty, such experiences ignite in us a savage longing for reprieve.
In these moments, the temptation to barter away the soul for relief feels chillingly plausible. Stevenson knew this and crafted a story that resonates with our shared recognition: the wish that “all of this could just magically go away” can never be bought cheaply. Fate demands its price, and, as tradition has long reminded us, the devil always collects. This is why the “Deal with the Devil” motif is so enduring. King Midas’ touch gave him immeasurable wealth but rendered him a pariah. Achilles gained unmatched strength only under the shadow of early death.
Adam and Eve, like Faust, bartered innocence for knowledge and paid dearly for the exchange. Dorian Gray, Narcissus, and Adonis discovered the terrible burden of beauty. Musicians such as Paganini, Tartini, Tommy Johnson, and Robert Johnson were whispered to have traded their souls for genius. Folklore echoes the same warning through figures like the Miller’s daughter in “Rumpelstiltskin,” Jack O’Lantern, or the Little Mermaid, who bargain for fleeting gains only to suffer when the debt comes due. Such tales are not confined to any one nation: they are universal, crossing continents and centuries, because they reflect an innate understanding of the human condition.
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Stevenson, however, reshapes this familiar bargain into something subtler and more intimate. Where many “Faustian” narratives focus on ambition, vanity, or greed, “The Bottle Imp” narrows in on love itself—its beauty, its terror, and its tragic ironies. Keawe, the story’s protagonist, might have resisted temptation were it not for his love for Kokua; his desire to secure her happiness drives him deeper into the bottle’s snare. Likewise, Kokua’s own 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 love, however, brings no peace. Instead, it leaves Keawe condemned to a living hell once he realizes what she has done.
In this bitter twist, Stevenson anticipates the paradoxical sacrifices in O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi”: love transforms into pain, generosity into ruin, and devotion into a trap more dreadful than selfishness ever could be. This theme—the dark underside of love—is what sets Stevenson’s tale apart from his more familiar works. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll is too proud to repent; in “The Body Snatcher,” Fettes is too hardened and cynical; in “Markheim,” repentance comes only at the price of life itself. Keawe, in contrast, finds an improbable reprieve.
The story introduces the irreverent mariner, a figure who casually inherits the curse and relieves Keawe of damnation. The reprieve is razor-thin, but it grants the lovers a second chance, an element of grace unusual in Stevenson’s darker fiction. Yet even this relief carries unease. The mariner’s indifference raises unsettling questions: is damnation less terrifying if one does not fear it? Can evil be neutralized by irreverence? Stevenson leaves these questions tantalizingly unresolved, adding a note of ambiguity that complicates the story’s moral.
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Critics have often noted how “The Bottle Imp” blends European folklore with Polynesian settings and sensibilities. Written during Stevenson’s time in the South Seas, the story reflects his fascination with cultural hybridity: the imp itself derives from Western folklore, but its legend is transplanted to Hawaii, creating a cross-cultural fable about desire and consequence. Some scholars read this fusion as Stevenson’s commentary on colonialism and global exchange—how cultural “bargains” between the West and native societies could likewise conceal devastating costs. Others emphasize the story’s proto-existential qualities: Keawe’s struggle embodies the modern dilemma of choice, responsibility, and the limits of human control in a world where chance and fate intertwine. Ultimately, the tale underscores a universal truth: be careful what you wish for, and above all, learn to be content with what you have.
Yet unlike many cautionary fables, Stevenson tempers the message with tenderness. The lovers are scarred but not destroyed, their devotion tested by fire yet still intact. The horror remains—the possibility of eternal damnation, the specter of sacrifice turned futile—but so too does the reminder that love, even when tragic, can be redemptive. This is what gives “The Bottle Imp” its staying power. It is not simply a morality tale of greed punished or ambition humbled. It is a story of how love itself—our most selfless, human, and beautiful impulse—can become the very thing that imperils us. In its mingling of folklore and tragedy, terror and tenderness, Stevenson’s fable continues to echo across cultures and ages, as haunting today as when it was first told.