Analysis

Question 1

Story of the Door

Answer 1

• literal reference to the incident with Hyde disappearing through a door to retrieve a cheque to placate the girl’s family.
• metaphorical allusion to the journey on which the reader, led by Utterson, is now about to embark (1stchapter). That is a journey into the heart of darkness, where the truth of the beast that lies within us all will be revealed.

Question 2

Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east, the line was broken by the entry of a court… The door…was blistered and distained.

Answer 2

• periodic structure heightens tension as Hyde’s residence is explored.
• “Blistered and distained”, this rear door represents the id, the hidden self, Darwin’s beast, the private face.
• Jekyll’s front entrance, by contrast, represents the ego, the public face of respectability presented as a doctor of medicine.

Question 3

The man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground… It was like some damn juggernaut.

Answer 3

• scene more horrific by the juxtaposition the brutality of Hyde’s actions with complacency of his reactions.
• figurative language likening Hyde to a large chariot, emphasises his strength.

Question 4

I never saw a circle of such hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black sneering coolness…carrying it off, sir, really like Satan.

Answer 4

• vivid imagery, with the satanic Hyde surrounded by an intimidating crowd, conveys the evil of Hyde.
• simile reminds us that Hyde is an embodiment of Freud’s id and Darwin’s beast –both very popular theories at the time.

Question 5

It was his custom of a Sunday, when his meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang at the hour of twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night however…he took up a candle and went into his business room.

Answer 5

• long and complex sentence, laden with adverbial clauses, reference to midnight of the gothic qualities in the book
• highlights the dry and dull life overly controlled by the ego of Utterson
• real reason he is so drawn to Hyde and the heart of darkness.

Question 6

It is more than ten year’s since Henry Jekyll’s became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in the mind…and I have seen devilish little of the man.

Answer 6

• Lanyon explains his estrangement from Jekyll.
• Repetition of the word “wrong” helps to convey his sense of concern - heightens the reader’s the sense of anticipation in terms of Jekyll and the truth behind his strange behaviour.

Question 7

…still he was digging at the problem…his imagination also was engaged, or enslaved.

Answer 7

• reference to “digging” reminds us of the uncovering of the reader’s journey into the heart of darkness.
• Utterson’s is “enslaved” by the heart of darkness, just like Jekyll formerly and Lanyon later in the novel.

Question 8

…in spite of the low growl of London from all around.

Answer 8

• London is personified as a dystopian and satanic hell.
• Jack the Ripper was at large at the time the novel was published and believed by many to be a gentleman of high estate like Carew

Question 9

Mr Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of breath….snarled aloud into a savage laugh

Answer 9

• demonic imagery and words such as “hissing” and “savage” remind us of Darwin’s beast
• help to present Hyde as an evil entity.
• sibilance makes this worse

Question 10

Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming PEDE CLAUDO.

Answer 10

• Utterson concludes that Jekyll is being blackmailed into bequeathing his possessions to Hyde.
• repression, speculate that perhaps Jekyll has a sexual history, possibly homosexual, that he wants to keep a secret.
• metaphor also alludes to the fact that Hyde may be the illegitimate son of Jekyll, which in a sense he is in that he created him illegally.

Question 11

Although a fog rolled over the city in the small hours, the early part of the night was cloudless, and…brilliantly lit by the full moon.

Answer 11

• references to “fog” and “moon” remind us of the gothic qualities of the novel.

Question 12

Mr Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And the next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim underfoot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered…

Answer 12

• imagery suggests a release of the power of the beast within
• reference to “clubbed” and “ape-like fury” remind us of Jekyll’s regression into Darwin’s beast.
• metaphorical “storm of blows” helps to highlight the terrifying power of Hyde.
• “audibly shattered” - very onomatopoeic

Question 13

A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven…and there would be a rich lurid brown…like a district of some city in a nightmare.

Answer 13

• use of colours to show confusion + rapidity in the scene
• London is presented as a demonic and dystopian hell - evil has free reign and God or the city’s relationship with God is dead.

Question 14

…whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion.

Answer 14

• In an attempt to regain control, Jekyll engages in goodly and Godly acts in order to turn his back on the heart of darkness
• fears God, tampering

Question 15

Incident at the window.

Answer 15

• like The Story of the Door, it chapter offers a glimpse, to the reader and Utterson and Enfield, into the heart of darkness.’window’ ‘door’ small openings

Question 16

…the smile as struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below.

Answer 16

• imagery highlights the horror of the transformation and reactions of both Utterson and Enfield.

Question 17

…The fire was built high; and about the hearth the whole of the servants…stood huddled together like a flock of sheep.

Answer 17

• imagery, with all servants huddled around the fire as if for protection, helps to create tension and convey their anxieties to the reader.
• likening them to a flock of sheep Stevenson suggests their vulnerability and inability to cope with the danger of Hyde.

Question 18

“For God sake…find me some of the old.”

Answer 18

• sudden explosion and deviation from the learned standard English of Jekyll - Hyde is becoming dominant.
• remind us of Kurtz’s entreaty to “exterminate the brutes” in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Question 19

…when that masked thing like a monkey jumped among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it went down my spine like ice.

Answer 19

• defamiliarization is used to convey the strangeness of Hyde. - The mask he wears in now necessary because the mask of Jekyll and his public face is no longer available.
• first simile and succession of verbs remind us of Hyde’s Darwinian origin and convey a sense of the speed of this creature.
• The final simile helps to convey the effect on Poole.

Question 20

And now, you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors – behold!

Answer 20

• triadic, anaphoric period sentence builds tension before Hyde’s consumption of the drug.

Question 21

He reeled, staggered, clutched as the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came I though a change – he seemed to swell – his face became suddenly black…

Answer 21

• combination of expressive verbs, together with figurative language helps to convey the early transformation of Hyde
• embedded clause, punctuated with parenthetic dashes, helps to convey the swelling of the body by foregrounding the sentence intrusion: “he seemed to swell.”
• Stevenson uses sentence structure to highlight sentence content.

Question 22

…for there before my eyes – place and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death – there stood Henry Jekyll!

Answer 22

• periodic sentence mimics the transformation of Hyde back into Jekyll, highlighting Lanyon’s disbelief and confusion as onlooker.
  He is so affected because it is now evident that Jekyll is a serial killer, - that his rational perspective on science and medicine is wrong and because he has looked into the heart of darkness.
• lanyon dies

Question 23

Man is not truly one but truly two…

Answer 23

• Jekyll, in his final statement, outlines his motivation for developing the drug
• referring here to the duality of man.

Question 24

I…managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and second countenance substituted…and bore the stamp of lower elements of my soul.

Answer 24

• figurative language refers to the higher being of the ego being supplanted by the lower id or Darwinian beast.

Question 25

My devil had long been caged, he came out roaring…

Answer 25

- Jekyll explains his murder of Carew being motivated by the increasing fury of his id at being ignored for so long. - reminded of Freud when he argued that: the greater the repression, the stronger the aggression.

Question 26

It was a wild, cold seasonable night of march, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her.

Answer 26

- Pathetic fallacy, namely the adverse weather conditions - evil of Hyde - create tension for the forthcoming confrontation. - References to the inverted “moon” draw on elements of gothic fiction as well as suggesting, the order of the natural world has adversely been affected by man’s actions.