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.