The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Jun 10, 2018
3 min read

How I came across this book: Middle School

Favorite Line from the book:

Man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independent denizens.

All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil.

The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town’s life was still rolling in through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind.

The purpose of reading changes from the curiosity of finding out the story to the psychology of deciphering the unwritten message when you re-read a masterpiece. Even if someone has never read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, they know what the story is about – ‘Je’ (I), ‘kyll’ (Kill), ‘Hyde’ (hide the evil). Dr. Jekyll, a renowned doctor in the Victorian era London, embodies his evil conscious, Mr. Hyde, to satisfy his hidden desires by drinking a potion while keeping his real identity a secret.

The story is narrated mainly by three characters: Dr. Lanyon (Dr. Jekyll’s medical colleague who did not approve of his unscientific experiments), Mr. Utterson (Dr. Jekyll’s trusted lawyer and friend), and Dr. Jekyll (or his evil split personality Mr. Hyde). The timeline changes depending upon who is narrating the story so the reader only catches a snippet of the full picture until Dr. Jekyll confesses everything in the last chapter. Dr. Jekyll, a wealthy doctor with a big house in central London whom he acquired from a renowned surgeon, had a laboratory in the back of his house. He seemed to have given an awful amount of rights to his dubious friend Mr. Hyde, an evil looking character by many accounts, including a house key and full permission to enter or leave the house. To Mr. Utterson’s surprise, Dr. Jekyll had even signed his will in Mr. Hyde’s name. As the story progresses, Hyde’s vile in the city continues to grow to the extent that he murders a famous politician. Once Dr. Jekyll converted to Mr. Hyde in front of Dr. Lanyon, who died from shock 3 weeks later. This was a victory for both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll satisfied all his evil desires by changing himself into Mr. Hyde in his laboratory with the help of the chemical potion. By taking this dual identity, Jekyll could tell his conscious that he was innocent as all these crimes were being committed by Hyde. However, Jekyll gradually started to feel disgust and hate towards Hyde because of his extreme malice behavior. Hyde’s feelings for Jekyll were mutual – he disliked him for the low value in which he was regarded. Neverthless Hyde was scared of Jekyll because he could have killed him by committing suicide. Towards the end, Hyde’s character became so strong that Jekyll started converting into Hyde spontaneously without any potion. Dr. Jekyll manages to write a confession letter in the end revealing his true identity before committing suicide in order to get rid of Hyde. Ironically, when Mr. Utterson found the dead body in the room, he found the body of Edward Hyde instead of Henry Jekyll.

In the eighteenth century, John Hunter (the father of modern surgery) had a house in Leicester Square, London. He used the back-door entrance to get all cadavers delivered to his laboratory for anatomical dissection. These cadavers were acquired by either muscle or money as there were no laws. In creating the character of Jekyll & Hyde, Robert L. Stevenson was inspired by John Hunter. A century later, the character of J&H has inspired many plays and movies such as Stan Lee’s Hulk (inspired by both the Frankenstein’s monster and J&H), and recently M. Night Shyamalan’s Split. The story of good vs evil or black vs white has existed since the time mankind has developed a conscious. The reality is we all live in a spectrum, a grey zone instead of pure white or black. Which part of our character we allow to grow stronger will ultimately define us. When Dr. Jekyll converted into Mr. Hyde by using the potion, he would change into a small stature, evil looking character. Jekyll was never innocent in the first place. As mentioned earlier, his name was ‘I kill.’ His grey spectrum of good/evil was always lurking towards the evil side, which he allowed to grow further. As a result, towards the end, not only he started turning into Hyde spontaneously, but also Hyde’s body started to grow in size. Our ‘willpower,’ and the people we choose to surround ourselves with, will decide which side of our grey spectrum will get stronger.