Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / Robert Lewis Stevenson

Allegorical story of Good and Evil residing in ONE Man.

Dualities.

Dr Jekyll is a "large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty with something of a slyish cast",[14] who occasionally feels he is battling between the good and evil within himself, upon leading to the struggle between his dual personalities of Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde.

He has spent a great part of his life trying to repress evil urges that were not fitting for a man of his stature.

He creates a serum, or potion, in an attempt to mask this hidden evil within his personality.

However, in doing so, Jekyll transpired into the smaller, younger, cruel, remorseless, evil Hyde.

Jekyll has many friends and an amiable personality, but as Hyde, he becomes mysterious and violent.

As time goes by, Hyde grows in power.

After taking the potion repeatedly, he no longer relies upon it to unleash his inner demon, i.e., his alter ego.

Eventually, Hyde grows so strong that Jekyll becomes reliant on the potion to remain conscious.

The narrator believes that Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll.

“He found a way to transform himself and thereby indulge his vices without fear of detection.

Jekyll's transformed personality, Hyde, was evil, self-indulgent, and uncaring to anyone but himself.

Initially, Jekyll controlled the transformations with the serum, but one night in August, he became Hyde involuntarily in his sleep.

Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde.

One night, he had a moment of weakness and drank the serum.

Hyde, furious at having been caged for so long, killed Carew.

Horrified, Jekyll tried more adamantly to stop the transformations.

Then, in early January, he transformed involuntarily while awake.

Far from his laboratory and hunted by the police as a murderer, Hyde needed help to avoid capture.

He wrote to Lanyon (in Jekyll's hand), asking his friend to bring chemicals from his laboratory.

In Lanyon's presence, Hyde mixed the chemicals, drank the serum, and transformed into Jekyll.

The shock of the sight instigated Lanyon's deterioration and death.

Meanwhile, Jekyll's involuntary transformations increased in frequency and required ever larger doses of serum to reverse.

It was one of these transformations that caused Jekyll to slam his window shut on Enfield and Utterson.

Eventually, one of the chemicals used in the serum ran low, and subsequent batches prepared from new stocks failed to work.

Jekyll speculated that one of the original ingredients must have some unknown impurity that made it work.

Realizing that he would stay transformed as Hyde, Jekyll decided to write his "confession".

He ended the letter by writing, "I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end."”