Book Review: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738358/
In the novel, Stevenson creates a hero in Dr. Jekyll, who aware of the evil in his own being, and sick of the duplicity in his life, succeeds by way of his experiments on himself in freeing the pure evil part of his being as Mr. Hyde, so that each can indulge in a life unfettered by the demands of the other. As Dr. Jekyll says, “With every day and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and intellectual, I thus drew steadily 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.” He further adds,”… that I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man;… if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both”. Mr. Edward Hyde he describes as, “a second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul” and that, “Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil”.[2] Thus, Stevenson creates in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, two equipotent, coexistent, and eternally opposed components that make up a “normal” individual. Here, good and evil are not related but are two independent entities, individuals even, different in mental and physical attributes and constantly at war with each other. Evil now does not require the existence of good to justify itself but it exists simply as itself, depicted as being the more powerful, the more enjoyable of the two, and in the end ultimately it is the one that leads to Dr. Jekyll's downfall and death. This is because Dr. Jekyll in the last phases of his lucidity recognizes the danger that Mr. Hyde poses to society and altruistically decides to do away with himself. Stevenson seems to discard Christian notions of monism and embrace dualism as described above.Most significantly, Mr. Hyde enters and leaves Dr. Jekyll's house through the back door which seems a metaphor for the evil that lies behind the façade of civilization and refinement.

First, there is the religious allegory of the devil and the lower self as well as the “hiding” aspect of Hyde. Hyde could be an allegory of the devil himself. Hyde could be a demon inside of Jekyll, sort of like in the Exorcist, that needs to come out but eventually become uncontrollable. Although Dr. Jekyll is described as a nice man who has many friends, but he losses them all when he drinks the potion to become Hyde. Hyde could just be an allegory for a literal part of Dr. Jekyll, which is Stevenson’s statement of saying that every person holds a “lower self,” that just wait for an opportunity to reveal evil. Also one of the most famous quotes from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is “If he shall be Mr. Hide than I shall be Mr. Seek.” This could also mean that Hyde is just a part of Jekyll’s soul that literally hides within.