Duality of Man

Author’s Note – Seeing as how the entire last chapter of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was about duality, I thought it would be a good topic to write about. I believed that the whole essence of duality according to Stevenson was that we all have a primal, bestial side that due to our roots as animals. However, society does not accept that, and in order to conform to society we must behave and act well. Jekyll’s struggle is not that he is afraid of Hyde, he is afraid of people finding out that he is Hyde.


I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. This one sentence sums up the entirety of Stevenson’s message from this novel, that hidden beneath the barriers, lies and deceit in every human being there is an inner struggle being fought; good vs evil, right vs wrong, light vs dark. On the surface, Dr. Jekyll seems to be the epitome of a successful man, a large home, servants, and a close group of friends; a life anybody would desire. And yet, despite living a seemingly perfect life, Jekyll was going through the same struggles that we all go through, trying to make the right decisions in his life and be the model human being. However, the weight of the struggle that had been raging inside of him became too much to bear, and he cracked. The side of Jekyll that nobody had ever seen, the terrible maniacal side that he had spent years hiding came pouring out, unleashing its evil on the world.

Once Hyde had been released, Jekyll slowly began to lose his grip on his own identity, until he was unable to even control when he was himself, leading to his death. The temptation and power of this animalistic side combated the purity and social acceptance of the good side, feeding the flames of an everlasting struggle that burns not only in Jekyll, but all of us. It was the curse of mankind that in the agonized womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling.

Doors and Barriers

Author’s Note – Throughout the whole novel, doors have been a constantly recurring motif and they seem to come up in critical points in the story such as when Utterson is breaking down the door to Jekyll’s laboratory.


We are all guilty of putting up barriers in our life, pushing people out of our life who care about us and isolating ourselves even further. We hide our true identity behind these barriers, hoping that the image we project can conceal our real feelings. Dr. Jekyll is as guilty of this as anybody else. Rather than confide his true feelings to somebody else, his inner rage builds and builds until it boils over and manifests itself as a separate being, Mr. Hyde. Jekyll builds up his barriers, and begins to alienate himself from his closest friends in order to conceal Hyde, and protect his image. Jekyll not only builds up his emotional barriers, but his physical barriers, transforming into Hyde only when he’s behind locked doors. Stevenson is showing us that barriers not only prevent us from forming new relationships, they destroy the ones that we already have.

Lanyon's Death

Author’s note: I decided to write about whether it’s better to know the truth or stay in the dark because of Lanyon’s quick demise after he learned about Jekyll.


We all crave knowledge that we can’t have. This hunger to know everything about the world and what’s going on can lead to great discoveries, but in the case of Dr. Lanyon, this curiosity led to his demise. Like everybody else, Lanyon was greatly interested in Mr. Hyde, the mysterious man who had captivated London. However, unlike most others, Lanyon went far enough to try and learn Hyde’s dark secrets, essentially selling himself to the devil to try and learn what happened. However, the knowledge was too terrible for Lanyon, and he soon appeared as if his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older. The truth about Hyde was the direct cause of his downfall, and at the end of the chapter, Utterson is gripped with the same desire to learn more, but resists knowing that the knowledge is too terrible to know. The author is conveying the message that while the truth can be the light to illuminate our life and understanding of the world, sometimes it is better to be left in the dark, for the knowledge is not meant for us to know.

Light vs Dark

Author's Note - While I was reading pages 48-49 I noticed a lot of references to light and dark while Utterson was trying to find out more about Hyde, and I decided to write about how light and dark can be used to describe the truth and what we have yet to learn.

Driven crazy about his lack of knowledge on Hyde, Utterson sets out on a quest to find out as much as he can about Jekyll's mysterious beneficiary. This thirst for knowledge begins one night as Utterson is lying in bed, pondering about why Dr. Jekyll would give Hyde his downfall. And as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained room... While Utterson is literally lying in the dark of the night, metaphorically he is lying in the darkness of the absence of truth. If he could but once set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll altogether away... If Utterson is allowed but a glimpse of Hyde and a chance to understand his true character, the truth would bring light to the dark recesses of decietfulness that had taken root in his mind. When Utterson confronts Hyde outside of his house, the scene is described as being, a fine dry night; the frost in the air; the street as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow. The street lamps of the city of London not only illuminate the scene, but allow Utterson a clear look at Hyde's face, providing an answer to Utterson's question. The second part of the sentence highlights the struggle between truth and deception of which we have all taken a part in. A regular pattern of light and shadow accurately describes Utterson's position, he is equally unaware of just what is going on as much as he is aware. In the end, however, the light won out, and Utterson learned at least part of the truth, no matter how small.

English Short Story

The tires screeched and the alarms blared as car came to a skidding halt, finally ending its hellish ride upside down next to the base of a tall tree. The man staggered out of the car as it burst into flames, the fireball shooting its orange tendrils skyward. He collapsed in a heap next to a nearby tree as another car burst into a similarly brilliant explosion nearby, extinguishing the cries for help in the car in a flash. Off in the distance, the sirens blared as the man laid his head and against the tree and shut his eyes, the oncoming darkness providing a welcome break from his pounding headache.


As Dan groggily opened his eyes, the pounding sensation of bright, sterile lights beat down on him and while the steady beeping of various medical devices provided a rhythmic background. Dizzy and disoriented, he sat up, only to be knocked down by a sudden wave of nausea. For the life of him, Dan could not remember where he was or how he had ended up there. As he laid there, attempting to piece together the various parts of his memory back together, scattered events from last night began to trickle into memory. Dan remembered a car spinning out, a woman screaming, and a bright, vivid explosion, followed by pure darkness.

That couldn’t have been what happened. Dan vividly remembered leaving work that night, exhausted after another day of working overtime at his job as a quality assurance manager. Money had been tight around his house lately, and as a result, he was forced to extra hours in order to keep up with the tuition payments for his kid’s college. Dan had been tired recently, on account of his extra hours, but he was surely a good enough driver to make it home, a route he had driven hundreds of times, without crashing. It was probably just a movie that he had watched last night and was having a bad dream about.

As Dan began to take in his surroundings, his nausea settling down, a couple things caught his eye. A newspaper resting on his bedside table blared out from its headline DEADLY CAR CRASH 3 KILLED, and a clipboard at the foot of his bed with Alexian Brothers Hospital emblazoned on the back. That must be why Dan had no recollection of what happened last night. He must have had one of his seizures and blacked out at home, also explaining why he was in the hospital. Despite finally knowing where he was, the newspaper headline was what intrigued Dan more. As he flipped the newspaper open to the page, images of two mangled, smoking wrecks of cars greeted him, one of them being a black Toyota just like the one he drove. It was nothing more than a strange coincidence. Black Toyotas like that were extremely common, and the more that Dan looked at the picture, the less it looked like an area that he drove in often.

Dan put the newspaper down and flipped on the TV, hoping to pass the time with some mindless activity. A news report came on, the reporter standing next to the scene of that same car crash, the trees about her rustling in the wind. As the reporter began to list off the names of the victims, Dan listened with a growing apprehension as his memory of last night began to form clearly in his head. This anxiety was not quite the anxiety associated with the fear of being caught – and yet there was little that Dan could otherwise define it as. The voice of the newswoman faded into the cadence of the background as Dan finally began put together the pieces of his shattered memory. He had finally left work at 11, and set off on his drive home. He began to drift off behind the wheel, but it was only a ten minute drive home and he could surely make it. As he began rounding a bend, the full force of his sleep deprivation hit him, and he began dozing off behind the wheel, his foot applying more pressure to the accelerator as his body went limp. A pair of bright headlights suddenly cut into his view and both cars slammed into each other, but not before Dan stared into the terrified faces of the other car, 2 children among them.

When Dan initially recognized his responsibility – for it could hardly be interpreted as less – his shame and guilt was palpable. He killed three people. No justification could excuse him from the simple fact that he was responsible for the deaths of three people. Underneath the heaviness of guilt such as this, the remaining desire to live inside me submitted. Still dazed by his realization, Dan reached up and removed his oxygen mask.



This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil – and yet I should be at a loss otherwise to define it.

When I first beheld this apparition – for I could scarcely regard it as less – my wonder and my terror were extreme.

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed.