Character Sketch of MR. Hyde in 'DR. Jekyll and Mr. Hide',

          Hyde, as his name indicates, represents the fleshy (sexual) aspect of man which the Victorians felt the need to "hide" — as Utterson once punned on his name: "Well, if he is Mr. Hyde, I will be Mr. Seek."

           Hyde actually comes to represent the embodiment of pure evil merely for the sake of evil. When he is first extracted and in our first encounter with him, he is seen running over a young girl, simply trampling on her. He does not do this out of spite — or intentionally; it is simply an amoral act. He does make reparations. But even in this first encounter, he raises a fear, an antagonism, and a deep loathing in other people. The reaction of others to him is one of horror, partly because while looking at him, others feel a deep desire to strike out at him and kill him. In other words, his mere physical appearance brings out the very worst evil in other people.

        Since Hyde represents the purely evil in man (or in Dr. Jekyll), he is, therefore, symbolically represented as being much smaller than Dr. Jekyll — Jekyll's clothes are far too large for him — and Hyde is also many years younger than Jekyll, symbolically suggesting that the evil side of Jekyll did not develop until years after he was born.

         Hyde also creates terror; the servants are extremely frightened of him. When they think he is around the house, the servants cringe in horror, and some go into hysterics.

         As the novel progresses, Hyde's evil becomes more and more pronounced. He bludgeons Sir Danvers Carew to death for absolutely no reason other than the fact that Sir Danvers appeared to be a good and kindly man — and pure evil detests pure goodness.

        Since Hyde represents the evil or perverse side of Jekyll, and since Jekyll does, vicariously, enjoy the degradations which Hyde commits, Hyde gradually begins to take the ascendancy over the good Dr. Jekyll.

        A conflict between them erupts, as though the older Dr. Jekyll is a father to the errant and prodigal son. He wants to punish this son, but at the same time, he recognizes that Hyde is an intimate part of himself. Ultimately, when Jekyll commits suicide in order to get rid of Hyde (suicide is an evil act in the eyes of the church), this allows Hyde to become the dominant evil figure, and the dying Jekyll becomes Hyde in the final death throes.

Character Sketch of Mr. Uttersen in 'DR. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde',

             Except for the last two Chapters, most part of the novel is seen through the eyes of Mr. Utterson, In the novel Mr. Uttersen  functions as the "eyes" of "conscience" through which we can evaluate most of the novel.Therefore We can say that - 

              'if Utterson is deceived in his opinion of some event, then the reader is likewise deceived. This is because Utterson is such a fine, objective narrator who represents a highly moral and upright person; thus, we believe all that he says, and since he is a man of such prominence and integrity, we cannot doubt his explanation or his view of any event.'

            Utterson is a strange case of opposites. We first hear that he has a fond of wine but mortifies himself with gin instead. This, at first, sounds weird for a moral narrator, but then we are told that he is not censorious — that is, he is not anxious to judge and condemn his fellow man. This allows many people of differing degrees to come to him to seek advice, and it allows him to be privy to the secrets of the great and the less great. Yet, he also possesses an intense loyalty to his friends and is constantly concerned for their welfare. This attribute allows him to be deeply distressed over Dr. Jekyll's relationship with Mr. Edward Hyde. That is, Utterson is a shrewd judge of character, and he sees in Edward Hyde an immoral and evil person, and he is deeply concerned for his friend's (Dr. Jekyll's) well-being.

       For example, when he is convinced that Edward Hyde has injured Dr. Jekyll, he is quick to take action and break down the door to the laboratory in order to come to his friend's aid.

         Utterson is also the type of person who inspires trust — and deservedly so. When his friend Dr. Lanyon leaves a note not to be opened until Dr. Jekyll's death or disappearance, he is tempted to read it in order to see if there is any information which will assist Dr. Jekyll. Yet his honor forces him to store the document away without reading it.

       Ultimately, we do not know how Utterson is affected by the revelation found in Dr. Lanyon's and Dr. Jekyll's confessions, but from the horror of seeing Dr. Jekyll at the window, when Dr. Jekyll apparently began changing into Hyde, we can assume that Utterson was deeply affected, but due to his objective control over life and its vicissitudes — as a lawyer he has seen all types of criminals — we can assume that, unlike Dr. Lanyon, Utterson was able to survive.

Central Theme and Symbolism in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Duality of Human Nature

         Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde centers upon a concept of humanity as dual in nature,  we  does not find this theme in the begininig  but, when we read the complete story , at the end of the story  the Jekyll-Hyde relationship is revealed. There the theme of The Duality of Human Nature emerges, We conformely find the theory of a dual human nature explicitly only after having witnessed all of the events of the novel, including Hyde’s crimes and his ultimate eclipsing of Jekyll. The novel is not only the dipiction of  duality of human nature but it also forces uf to think about the hight of this duality.

        Jekyll claims that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” and he imagines the human soul as the battleground for an “angel” and a “demon,” and  they were struggling for mastery. But his potion id different and he try to purify each element, but he  succeeds only in bringing the dark side into being.  Once unleashed, Hyde slowly takes over, until Jekyll ceases to exist. If man is half angel and half demon, one wonders what happens to the “angel” at the end of the novel.

       Perhaps the angel gives way permanently to Jekyll’s devil. Or perhaps Jekyll is simply mistaken: man is not “truly two” but is first and foremost the primitive creature embodied in Hyde, brought under tentative control by civilization, law, and conscience. According to this theory, the potion simply strips away the civilized veneer, exposing man’s essential nature. Certainly, the novel goes out of its way to paint Hyde as animalistic—he is hairy and ugly; he conducts himself according to instinct rather than reason; Utterson describes him as a “troglodyte,” or primitive creature.

       Yet if Hyde were just an animal, we would not expect him to take such delight in crime. Indeed, he seems to commit violent acts against innocents for no reason except the joy of it—something that no animal would do. He appears deliberately and happily immoral rather than amoral; he knows the moral law and basks in his breach of it. For an animalistic creature, furthermore, Hyde seems oddly at home in the urban landscape. All of these observations imply that perhaps civilization, too, has its dark side.

        Ultimately, while Stevenson clearly asserts human nature as possessing two aspects, he leaves open the question of what these aspects constitute. Perhaps they consist of evil and virtue; perhaps they represent one’s inner animal and the veneer that civilization has imposed. Stevenson enhances the richness of the novel by leaving us to look within ourselves to find the answers.

The Importance of Reputation

          For the characters in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, preserving one’s reputation emerges as all important. The prevalence of this value system is evident in the way that upright men such as Utterson and Enfield avoid gossip at all costs; they see gossip as a great destroyer of reputation. Similarly, when Utterson suspects Jekyll first of being blackmailed and then of sheltering Hyde from the police, he does not make his suspicions known; part of being Jekyll’s good friend is a willingness to keep his secrets and not ruin his respectability. The importance of reputation in the novel also reflects the importance of appearances, facades, and surfaces, which often hide a sordid underside. In many instances in the novel, Utterson, true to his Victorian society, adamantly wishes not only to preserve Jekyll’s reputation but also to preserve the appearance of order and decorum, even as he senses a vile truth lurking underneath.

SYMBOLISM

      Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Jekyll’s House and Laboratory

       Dr. Jekyll lives in a well-appointed home, characterized by Stevenson as having “a great air of wealth and comfort.” His laboratory is described as “a certain sinister block of building … [which] bore in every feature the marks of profound and sordid negligence.” With its decaying facade and air of neglect, the laboratory quite neatly symbolizes the corrupt and perverse Hyde. Correspondingly, the respectable, prosperous-looking main house symbolizes the respectable, upright Jekyll. Moreover, the connection between the buildings similarly corresponds to the connection between the personas they represent. The buildings are adjoined but look out on two different streets. Because of the convoluted layout of the streets in the area, the casual observer cannot detect that the structures are two parts of a whole, just as he or she would be unable to detect the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde.

Hyde’s Physical Appearance

           According to the indefinite remarks made by his overwhelmed observers, Hyde appears repulsively ugly and deformed, small, shrunken, and hairy. His physical ugliness and deformity symbolizes his moral hideousness and warped ethics. Indeed, for the audience of Stevenson’s time, the connection between such ugliness and Hyde’s wickedness might have been seen as more than symbolic. Many people believed in the science of physiognomy, which held that one could identify a criminal by physical appearance. Additionally, Hyde’s small stature may represent the fact that, as Jekyll’s dark side, he has been repressed for years, prevented from growing and flourishing. His hairiness may indicate that he is not so much an evil side of Jekyll as the embodiment of Jekyll’s instincts, the animalistic core beneath Jekyll’s polished exterior.

Character Sketch of Dr. Jekyll in 'DR. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'

             Dr. Jekyll is the  prominent character of ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. He is  popular  scientist of London, who is well known for his dinner parties. Jekyll is a large hearted, and very handsome man of perhaps fifty. He is owner of a large estate and has recently drawn up his will, leaving his immense fortune to a man whom Jekyll's lawyer, Utterson, thoroughly disapproves of.

       Jekyll's own story of his life is recorded in his "Statement," which comprises the entirety of Chapter 10.

      "He was born to a good family, had a good education, and was respected by all who knew him. As a youth, he thinks that perhaps he was too light-hearted. He confesses to many youthful indiscretions, which he says that he enjoyed very much — indiscretions which he was very careful to keep secret. However, there came a time when he realized that his professional career could be ruined if one of these indiscretions were to be exposed, and so he repressed them."

         Now, however, When  he is middle-aged, he has been fascinated with the theory that man has a "good" side and a "bad" side, and he has decided to investigate the theory. His investigations were successful; he compounded a potion that could release the "evil" in a person in the form of an entirely different physical person, one who would take over one's own body and soul. Then one could commit acts of evil and feel no guilt; furthermore, one could drink the same potion and be transformed back into one's original self.

       Jekyll's evil dimension took the form of Edward Hyde, a man who committed any number of crimes and performed acts of sexual perversion; seemingly, his most serious crime is the vicious murder of Sir Danvers Carew, a Member of Parliament.

          Jekyll's fascination with his "other" self became so obsessive that he was finally no longer able to control the metamorphosis process, and Edward Hyde began appearing whenever he wanted to — and not at the command of Dr. Jekyll. Jekyll became, therefore, a frightened recluse, trying desperately to control Hyde, but successively failing, especially whenever he would doze off. Finally, crazed by anxiety and a lack of sleep, he hears Utterson and Poole, his butler, breaking down his private study door and, in desperation, he commits suicide, but just as he loses consciousness, Hyde appears, and it is the writhing body of the dying Hyde which Utterson and Poole discover.