“If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”
First published in 1886, the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will probably be familiar to many people. Even if you haven’t read the book, there is a good chance that you have heard about this classic story about the duality of human nature and the dangers of science.
Mr. Utterson, a respectable lawyer who is a friend of Dr. Jekyll, is concerned that the doctor seems to be closely associated with a Mr. Hyde who people say is an abominable character. Utterson assumes that Mr. Hyde is somehow blackmailing Dr. Jekyll, but as the nature of the connection between Jekyll and Hyde is slowly revealed, Utterson is shocked to discover that the truth is far more sinister than that.
The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has two main premises. One is the idea of good and evil, not as external forces, but as integral parts of human nature. The other is the idea of Mr. Hyde being so evil that everyone who ever meets him right away senses that there is something terribly wrong with him.
Mr. Hyde doesn’t stand out because he has evil inside him. Mr. Hyde stands out because his entire personality is nothing but evil. Interestingly, Dr. Jekyll isn’t the exact opposite of Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde is 100% evil, but Dr. Jekyll isn’t 100% good. He is, in fact, a very normal human being who is attracted to both right and wrong, and therefore, I assume, has some amount of evil in him already.
At less than 100 pages, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a quick read, and a great opportunity to read a classic without having to devote weeks or months to a heavy tome. It starts out as a mystery and ends as a horror, and all throughout it is full of suspense, unease and darkness bubbling right under the surface of Victorian era ideals of morality and respectability.
Classics – Mystery – Horror
Leave a Reply