Jekyll and Hyde

In 1885 Robert Louis Stevenson had a nightmare. When he woke, he sat at his desk and three days later he had written The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mrs. Stevenson, however, didn’t like the story that Stevenson had written and objected to it. Mr. Stevenson, in a rage, threw the manuscript into fire where it was consumed by flames. Afterwards, a calmer Mr. Stevenson changed his mind, sat down once again, and three days later, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde returned and he devoted it to his cousin, rather than to his wife.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is based upon a beginning in humanity as dual in nature, although the theme of the book does not come out until the very last chapter, when the completed story of the Jekyll/Hyde relationship is discovered. We face the speculation of a dual human nature openly only after having read all of the events of the novel, such as Hyde’s crimes and his ultimate eclipsing of Jekyll. Duality of the human nature is the main theme in the book but it makes us think about the properties of duality and to consider each of the novel’s chapters as we think about many different theories. The quote “man is not truly one, but truly two”. I believe Stevenson means this, as a man has 2 different personalities. When released, Hyde slowly takes over, until Jekyll doesn’t exist anymore. If man is half good and half a bad, we are left wondering what happened to the good person at the end of the novel. Stevenson leaves us wondering at the end of the book, if what he has written about is true and it leaves us wondering. Possibly the good person is permanently let in Jekyll’s devil or maybe Jekyll is simply incorrect: man is not “truly two” but is first a creature that comes alive in Hyde, brought under control by civilization, law, and conscience. According to this theory, the potion just takes away the civilized cover, showing the man’s essential nature. The novel paints Hyde as animalistic—he is