Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

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Character List

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Major characters: Mr John Utterson, Dr Jekyll, Mr Edward Hyde.

Medium level characters: Mr Poole, Mr Enfield, Sir Danvers Carew, Mr Guest, Dr Lanyon.

Minor characters: Every other character is considered as minor

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Themes

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The main themes of the story are: scientific development, nature vs supernatural and duality of human nature. Scientific development is an obvious one because one of the major characters is a scientific doctor, and one of the others is the creation of massive development in science, of course the doctor is Jekyll and the creation is Hyde, when Utterson goes to see his long time friend Dr Lanyon, Lanyon reveals that he thinks Jekyll's experiments were "Balderdash" and he didn't believe it could be done, but of course Jekyll's mad experiments did happen and actually made Lanyon die of shock when he first saw the experiment take place (the experiment being Jekyll turning to Hyde). Nature vs supernatural isn't such an obvious theme , it does take some hard thinking, take the relationship between Lanyon and Jekyll, in Lanyon's experiments he obey the laws of nature and will not push it's limits (which is why he calls Jekyll's experiments "Balderdash"), but with Jekyll he also obeys the laws of nature but he pushes the limits of the laws of nature so far, his experiments are nearly supernatural, because with Lanyon you can imagine the results of his experiments, but what decent Victorian man could have imagined a perfectly respectable man such as Jekyll turning himself into the embodiment of his evil nature by means of a drug, it was enough for the Victorians to think that everybody had an evil side to them, but to access it was completely out of the ordinary, and supernatural. Duality of human nature, is the most obvious theme, because Jekyll has one core belief, which is that every single man has an evil animal-like side to them, and then he proves this by becoming the embodiment of his evil animal-like nature.

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Setting

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is set in Victorian London, which fits in with the dark theme of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because Victorian London was indeed a very dark place. Even though it is set in London, the streets are very rarely busy in the story, which suggests something supernatural about the setting

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Plot Summary

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At the beginning of the story we are introduced to Mr Utterson and his cousin/friend Mr Enfield, they are taking a stroll through the streets of London, which we are told is weekly. Soon the two come across a very sinister looking door, this compels Enfield to tell a story which is about the door or more importantly who the property belonged to. Enfield's story begins with a girl and a juggernaut-like figure heading directly towards each other but not realising it as they couldn't actually see each other, soon enough the pair collided, but the juggernaut-like man simply tramples on the young girl, who obviously screams in pain which attracts Enfield and later the girl's family and doctor, Enfield soon brings the man back to the place where the event happened, where the family and doctor were positioned around the girl, the two men (Enfield and the doctor) eventually agree that the man (who we now know as Mr Hyde) should pay the fee of treatment as the family were very poor, they also agreed that they would disgrace him. Soon we come to the sinister door, which Hyde enters unopposed (which can be considered as a massive mistake on the part of Enfield) and soon comes out bearing a check which could pay the fee, but the name was not Mr Edward Hyde, the name is not revealed just yet, but soon the group go to the bank to see if the check was genuine, and the bank reveals that it was indeed genuine, and so the story ends and we come back to Utterson Enfield and we hear Utterson ask what the name was, Enfield doesn't answer this but does say that the name was that of someone Utterson knew very well, someone who he had knew for a very long time, Utterson seems to catch on and reveals that he might know who Enfield was speaking of, and indeed he had figured it out. In the next chapter Mr Utterson goes home to find a will which he written for his friend Jekyll, he wanted to confirm that the will said what he thought it said, and indeed it did say what Utterson thought it said, it said that in the event of Jekyll's death all money and property should have been handed over to Mr Edward Hyde. Utterson had always been puzzled by this will, but now that he knew of Hyde's behaviour, it made it all the lot worse, so Utterson began to think that Hyde had a strange control over Jekyll so he visits Lanyon to see what he knows about Mr Hyde. Lanyon unfortunately says that he doesn't even recognise the name, so Utterson goes home and has a nightmare in his sleep about the man who trampled on the girl visiting Jekyll in his sleep, when he wakes he decides to seek out Mr Hyde with the classic quote "If he shall be Mr Hyde, I shall be Mr Seek", and so Utterson begins his own quest to find Hyde, he eventually finds Hyde outside the door that Enfield had told a story about, and at first Hyde is reluctant to talk to Utterson but soon becomes more confident and becomes more and more rude towards Utterson, and even gives Utterson his address (which happens to be in Soho), as a result of Hyde being rude to him Utterson takes a disliking to Hyde, and goes to see Jekyll about the matter but Jekyll dismisses his worries by telling Utterson not to concern himself with the matter. So Utterson takes his friend's word and doesn't concern with the matter and a year passes uneventfully. But at the end of the uneventful a maid witnesses Hyde brutally beat Sir Danvers Carew to death (Carew was an MP and a client of Utterson), the police call Utterson to the police station (where they were holding the body) and asks him to identify the victim, Utterson of course recognises Carew and truthfully tells the police that it was indeed Carew but he also suspects Hyde (he doesn't actually know for sure and neither do the police) so he leads the police to Hyde's address in Soho, but Hyde himself wasn't found but one half of the used cane (for the murder) and a burnt book was found, but Utterson was puzzled because the cane was the same as the one he had gifted to Jekyll once. As a result of that futile search Utterson goes to see Jekyll again. Utterson receives a great shock when he sees the state his friend is in (who was looking "deathly pale") but carries on with his purpose and asks him about Hyde, and Jekyll says that they will not hear of Hyde again, which Jekyll confirms by giving Utterson a letter from Hyde himself saying that Jekyll doesn't need to concern himself with Hyde anymore, Utterson seeing that the letter is from Hyde he takes his friend's word again. When Utterson goes home he speaks with his friend Mr Guest (who is an expert on handwriting) and shows him Hyde's letter, and then Utterson's servant enters the room with a note from Jekyll, Guest immediately recognises that the handwriting in Hyde's letter and Jekyll's note was eerily similar. Utterson never takes any action about this but this was mainly because for two months after the event Jekyll became his old self again and started to host more dinner parties. But soon this period ended with Jekyll refusing to see anyone, not even Utterson. Utterson realizing how serious Jekyll's disappearance could be goes to see Lanyon for any information, because he knew that in Jekyll's two month period of socialising Lanyon and Jekyll became a tiny bit closer, but when he gets to Lanyon's house he gets a terrible shock as he sees Lanyon on his deathbed (literally) and he reveals that he has been dealt a great shock by Jekyll (we don't get to know what that was until later), he also gives Utterson a letter that was only to be opened in the event of Jekyll's death or disappearance and Utterson in his last act of loyalty towards Lanyon locks the letter away in a safe, and in a few days Lanyon becomes the first of the friendship group of Utterson, Lanyon and Jekyll to die. After this everything returns to normal for Utterson (Jekyll is still in seclusion at this time) and we hear of him taking a walk with Enfield for the first time since chapter 1, but this walk is again eventful, and is one of the most mysterious moments in the book, because on their walk they walk past Jekyll's house and see Jekyll at his window, and they begin to converse, but this is brought to an abrupt end when Jekyll slams his window shut without any warning, Utterson and Enfield walk away immediately speechless and horrified. Soon after this event Poole comes to Utterson's house to summon him to Jekyll's house in a state of desperation, Utterson sensing that something was sorely amiss follows Poole and when he arrives sees every single one of Jekyll's servants sat in the hall of the house and Utterson exclaims that they should be in their normal places, which angers Poole in a certain way, soon Poole orders certain servants into positions for an operation in which they would break into Jekyll's laboratory, Poole and Utterson go to the door to the laboratory and Poole gives Jekyll reason to speak and Utterson realises that the voice has been changed, so he calls Jekyll himself and Jekyll replies, but Utterson realises that the voice isn't Jekyll's, it was Hyde's, acting immediately he says "Down with the door Poole" and they break in seeing Hyde lying dead. Hyde's body is strange because it is wearing Jekyll's clothes and it appears that he had committed suicide by scientific means, which Hyde knew nothing about. Upon further searching in the room Utterson and Poole find a letter addressed to Utterson and a changed will that now gives everything to Utterson instead of Hyde. After this Utterson goes home and reads Dr Lanyon's letter which tells us that the shock that killed Lanyon came from Lanyon seeing Hyde taking a potion which made him metamorphose back into Jekyll (by this time Utterson had been suspecting that Jekyll and Hyde were the same person so this piece of information only confirms the fact). After completing Lanyon's letter he reads Jekyll's letter, it describes how Hyde was created as a result of an experiment which Jekyll had conducted to try and separate his "good side" from his "bad side", he also explains how at first he enjoyed changing to Hyde, and especially liked having the moral freedom that Hyde had, but then Jekyll describes that he started turning to Hyde involuntarily, which resulted in him not taking the potion for a while, but then Jekyll describes that he had a powerful urge to change back to Hyde, which made him turn into Hyde and go out and murder Sir Danvers Carew. Jekyll then describes how he was horrified at this sudden turn of events and how he tried very hard to stop being Hyde, and he proved successful for a while (which was the period in which he was throwing dinner parties) but then he describes how he suddenly turned into Hyde in a park (involuntarily) and he tells us that this was the first time he had changed into Hyde in public. This horrific event lead to his period of extreme seclusion (in which the "Incident at the Window" happened) and he describes how in this period he was trying to make a potion to stop being Hyde forever, and then he describes how when he finally mustered a potion he went to Lanyon as Hyde and took the potion in front of him, and of course we know that this shock eventually kills Lanyon, after this Jekyll finds himself in a worse state than ever before, his transformations become more frequent and he needs to take a larger dose of the potion, and because of this the potion begins to run out and Jekyll couldn't find the correct ingredients and so at the end of Jekyll's he tells us that he is about to turn into Hyde permanently and so he says that when the letter ends, so does the life of Jekyll.