Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Dont forget that this week it would be helpful to read (but not essential) to read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Link below. If you cant do that, here is a summary of the book by James M.

Summary assessment by James M. of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien was a great read. However, when it was made into a circa nine hour movie length feature for that trilogy the movie had lost a lot of the beauties that were within the book and which cannot be provided in the entirety of a movie. It is with this in mind that whilst readers may benefit from a shortened version of the Jekyll and Hyde story as provided below, they should note that the commensurate downside is the readers’ loss of appreciation in the beauty of the story, particularly with regards the descriptive language.

Five key characters stood out in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but only two were consistently the focus throughout the story line. One was Mr Utterson who was a trusted lawyer, whom I initially thought was probably the central character, especially when I had some prior knowledge about the beast within the story through some animation that I saw a while ago. For examples, Utterson was described as one who was “never lighted by a smile”, a “man of rugged countenance”, or who is “undemonstrative at his best” and again “his friends were those of own blood”. How prejudiced is the mind when exposed to texts with such descriptions.

The second key character was Dr. Jekyll. Further reading of this short novel confirmed that it was Dr. Jekyll who turned out to be also the principal character of the story.

You may be wondering as to who were the other three characters in this novel. The long distant kinsman of Mr. Utterson was Mr. Richard Endfield whom I thought was responsible (with the help of Utterson) for introducing us to the character of Mr. Hyde. In one of Enfield and Utterson’s Sunday walks on the streets of London and in a backdrop of an era in the 1800s they came across a lane, which by contrast to the weekends was very busy on weekdays with its colorful shop fronts that carried an aura with an “air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen”. I thought the contrasting description of the street on the various days of the week was similar to the contrasting nature of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that the reader was exposed to later on as the story unfolded. Mr. Enfield was the third key character.

The lane was the location of Mr. Hyde’s domicile. It was Mr. Enfield who came across an eerie looking two-storey building which appeared to show no window but a strange looking door at the lower storey. The door reminded Mr. Enfield that this was the exact place where Mr. Hyde had taken him after the latter was detained by the former for trampling calmly and without guilt over a girl whom Mr. Hyde had felled from a collision. Mr. Hyde was a beastly looking dwarf with a hateful looking face. His appearance appeared to represent the very nature of evil. Witnesses generally confirmed his looks as revolting and extremely odd in stature.

It was Mr. Utterson’s probing of Mr. Enfield’s recount of the story at this juncture that finally introduced Mr. Utterson and the reader to the character of Mr. Edward Hyde.

The name Hyde triggered the lawyer to re-review a will that he had in his possession on behalf of Dr. Jekyll. It was an unusual will which contained clauses that provide for Dr. Jekyll to transfer his possessions without delay to Mr. Edward Hyde if there was an unexplained absence of the doctor for any period exceeding three calendar months.

Curiosity led Mr. Utterson to his old time school and college friend the great Dr. Lanyon’s home. Lanyon knew of Dr. Jekyll for as long as the lawyer but he had since lost touch with the other doctor. When Lanyon was questioned as to who this Hyde was – the protégé of Dr.
Jekyll –Mr. Lanyon replied that he never heard of him. Lanyon was the fourth key character.

Mr. Utterson, whose extreme curiousity at this point in time led him to stalk Mr. Hyde patiently near his place of abode for a long while.
Utterson wanted to meet Hyde. The lawyer’s perseverance rewarded him finally one evening when Mr. Hyde finally appeared. As Hyde approached his weird looking door, Mr. Utterson stepped out of the dark corner and forced his introduction onto Hyde. Mr. Hyde asked Utterson how he knew of him. Mr. Utterson was not entirely truthful with his answer.
Utterson confirmed that it was their mutual friend Dr. Jekyll whom had referred him. Hyde’s response was mixed with a tinge of anger and a coarse voice. He rejected Utterson’s answer and stated categorically that his response was false. In an ‘extraordinary quickness” Hyde “unlocked the door and disappeared into the house”.

A few weeks later, Mr. Utterson was invited to a dinner with some of Dr. Jekyll’s cronies at the doctor’s home. Mr. Utterson deliberately stayed long after the dinner had ended its normal expiry time to give him an opportune moment to question the doctor further about Mr. Hyde who was the benefactor to his Will. At this point of the story, the lawyer still did not know of Mr. Hyde. When the subject of Hyde came up, the doctor became annoyed and started dismissing Utterson’s queries. He begged Utterson to let this topic rest.

The story took an acute turn when Hyde was identified as the prime suspect in the murder of a prominent character in Sir Danvers Carew circa a year later. The lawyer took flight to the doctor’s house due to his strong link to Mr. Hyde and because Carew was also the lawyer’s client. Utterson was taken into the house by Jekyll’s butler Poole.
Dr. Jekyll confirmed that he would have nothing to do with Mr. Hyde after the murder incident. Jekyll also provided to the lawyer a supposed letter from Mr. Hyde in which its brief content gave the doctor’s assurance of his safety. It must have been the lawyer’s natural instinct to perform like a detective when he asked the doctor some brilliant questions, like the locality of the envelope and how it arrived at his address. The doctor’s responses were damning and incriminating. He said he had burned the envelope and the letter was hand delivered on the day of receipt. On his exit of the house alone with Poole, the lawyer asked what he thought of the person whom had handed in the letter on that day. Poole was absolutely certain that nothing had come in except by post on that day. Mr Utterson’s “fear was renewed” further when he asked his clerk Mr. Guest to check the style of the hand written letter. It bore great resemblance to an invitation letter from Dr. Jekyll that the lawyer had kept. The point of difference between the two writings was that that they “only sloped differently”.

A number of letters were introduced in the story line and two of these were that of Lanyon’s narrative and Jekyll’s statement of the case.
Lanyon was revealed as the only character that had the unfortunate experience of witnessing the transformation of Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll on an evening in Lanyon’s home. This event occurred as a result of Lanyon’s agreement to attend to Jekyll’s earnest request for help under their “seal of profession”. Lanyon’s narrative and Jekyll’s letters confirmed the revelations provided below.

Dr Jekyll turned out to be the central character that literally carried the dual identity of man and beast like creature known as Mr Edward Hyde. As noted earlier, because of my previous encounter of this story of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I was never certain as to which character was the beast. My initial impression was that it had to be Dr Jekyll simply by the mere pronunciation of this name, which co-incidentally rhymes with the animal called the jackal and so the mind was inclined to believe.

Hyde and Jekyll, although in one body shared a dual identity which on one hand appeared to represent evil and on the other a normal man in the form of a doctor. This duality was possible as a result of the doctor’s scientific discovery of a potion that carried the power to transform a man’s natural state from that of normality to that of deformability as represented by Mr. Hyde. Hyde was noted by many whom have seen him as a dwarf with the “haunting sense of unexpressed deformity”. At the height of Poole’s suspicion that something was seriously wrong with Jekyll, whom had locked himself in his room the butler desperately sought Mr. Utterson’s help. At the final moment of Utterson’s imminent discovery of Jekyll’s dual identity at his home as the two gentlemen tried to force their way into Jekyll’s room, it was all too late. Dr. Jekyll in the state of the being of Mr. Hyde had ended his life.

Lastly and for your information in case you were still wondering is that the fifth character was of course Mr. Edward Hyde.

Perhaps, what Robert Louis Stevenson tried to reveal was that there is a sense of Mr. Hyde in all of us. At our best, the world can gather together to help the victims of natural disasters for examples like the recent earthquakes in Italy and Indonesia or the typhoon disaster in Taiwan. At our worst, the world can commit atrocities towards each other, like those in Auschwitz in World War II as well as many similar examples which are being committed to this present day. It is little wonder Jesus who was nothing like us in our sinful state saw the world as evil as recounted in the Bible under John 7:7. Hence, the world needed a great Savior to redeem it from the face of eternal destruction. Step forth Jesus Christ around 30 AD who was sent by God to redeem his people through his death and resurrection.