Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde Passage Analysis

Throughout the entire novel of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, everyone is inquiring or investigating about something. The characters are either meddling in someone else’s business or they become curious about something scientific. Because of this curiosity, different people get in trouble in some way. In the first chapter, Mr. Utterson’s friend Mr. Enfield says, “You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. No sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.” (35). This is an important epigraph for the entire novella because when Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Utterson, and Mr. Lanyon become curious, someone gets in trouble.
Jekyll. He questions whether man can be split in two; one half would be the evil half and the other half would be strictly a good-intentioned gentleman. (79) Dr. Jekyll does this experiment on himself but something goes wrong and he becomes strictly his evil side. This transformation allows him to have a separate persona, a separate life. He thrives of off the power he feels when he becomes Mr. Hyde. (81) This leads to his ultimate downfall. He finds it so hard to keep his old self. This constant changing back and forth leads him to eventually kill himself because he has lost hope. His original curiosity of trying to make him self solely good is what leads to his demise in the end.