Jekyll and Hyde Quotes

• “like rows of smiling saleswomen” - Description of the towns illusion of perfection, through the shopfronts
• “some place at the end of the world” - Enfield says this and it suggests everyone has tendencies to immorality
• “It was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man, it was like some damned juggernaut” - How respectable men such as Enfield picture and recount how they sight such a despicable being such as hyde
• Jekyll: “Labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate” - Jekyll endures an incredibly tough time as he obsessively endeavours to uphold the esteemed reputation he has
• Lanyon: “my life is shaken to its roots” “the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and night” - Lanyon believes he will certainly never recover from the catastrophic event that he has witnessed
• Jekyll: “separation of these elements” “housed in separate identities” - Reflects jekylls sheer arrogance, he thought he would be able to create a divide between his two personalities
• Jekyll: “that these polar twins should be continually struggling” - Jekyll describes how his two opposite sides will continue to struggle in the fight to attain wholly to jekyll
• Jekyll: “immaterial tabernacle” - used by Dr. Jekyll metaphorically to describe his physical body as something transient and insubstantial, a mere vessel that he can discard and exchange for another identity, that of Mr. Hyde. It reflects his dissociation from his physical form during his transformations and his belief in the separateness of his identities.
• Jekyll/Hyde: “ugly idol” - Jekyll refers to Hyde as this, quite an unorthodox person to look up to. Stevenson could be making a commentary on those hypocritical idols in the VE - respectable people
• “wanting in the strength to keep it” - Jekyll understands what hes doing is wrong and he wishes for the strength to resist his temptations
• “struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror” - Jekyll feels bad about what he has done, however, this is juxtaposed by thrill which implies though he is wanting in the strength to resist, acting as hyde brings him much pleasure
• common quarry of mankind” - Reflects jekylls belief that duality is imminent in every aspect of the human life
• “strung to the pitch of murder’ - Hyde is the enfleshment of evil, he literally has a passion for violence .
• Jekyll/Hyde: “a creature eaten up and emptied by fear” - Describes how Hyde in devoid and seldom in expressing emotion a creature lacking in these features entirely