Edexcel Lit Paper 2 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde part A answer
Extract from chapter 10 “Let me but escape into my laboratory…..But this danger was easily eliminated from the future.”
1a) Explore how Stevenson presents the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde in this extract. Give examples from the extract to support your ideas (20 marks)
Jekyll is seen to be relaxed at the beginning of this extract. HE talks about how he can revert to Jekyll and once damage was done, and therefore the guilt is let with Hyde and Hyde only. Stevenson’s use of the simile, ‘Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror,’ outlines how easy it was for Jekyll to revert himself from Hyde to Jekyll and that it was as simple and as quick as ‘the stain of breath upon a mirror.’ Also, Stevenson has juxtaposed the ‘breath on the mirror’ and ‘stained,’ as a breath on a mirror is not a stain, it is a non-permanent, but Stevenson wanted to compound the idea that although being Hyde looked permanent on the outside to the Victorian public, Hyde was just a temporary escape for Jekyll to fulfil his desires.
As the extract progresses, so does the severity of Hyde’s behaviour. Stevenson uses ‘they soon began to turn towards the monstrous’ to represent Hyde’s accumulating evil inside him. As Jekyll continues through his statement, Stevenson has clearly tried to represent Jekyll as becoming more and more agitated, ‘was being inherently malign and villainous.’ Stevenson has done this by accumulating more and more short, linked sentences, until the extract becomes a sea of short sentences. The short sentences show that Jekyll is becoming honest with himself, but they also show Jekyll is very nervous and flustered at this point. He does not like speaking the truth as Jekyll often wore a façade to skew the views of other characters. Stevenson also has used an array of semi colons, splitting the short sentences up, ‘thought centred on self; drinking pleasure…torture to another; relentless like a man of stone.’ Stevenson wanted to show the accumulation of Hyde’s actions as they lead from one crime to another, each action along the line having a more evil effect. Jekyll obviously regrets this, and this overall adds to the love/hate relationship Jekyll has with Hyde. However, Jekyll then becomes more at ease, as if his emotions were insulting from loving Hyde to hating Hyde. ‘It was Hyde after all’ is a dominant line that shows Jekyll thinks he should not be held accountable for Hyde’s crimes.
Jekyll then enters a stage of worry, as he describes the fear he had during the trampling of the girl. He describes Hyde’s crime as an ‘act of cruelty to a child’ which immediately brings connotations of murder and other cruel crimes which nobody wanted to be related with. Jekyll says ‘he feared for his life’ as he tricks the family he had just beaten into accepting a cheque not even in Hyde’s name. Stevenson again wanted to outline the risk and worried state of Jekyll during this time, so during the statement Stevenson again used semi colons to accumulate the tension and worry before then narratively shifting into a state of relaxation, using long complex sentences showing his relief, ‘but this danger was easily eliminated from the future, by opening an account at another bank in the name of Edward Hyde.’ Although Jekyll thought his plan was genius, Stevenson has cleverly foreshadowed Jekyll’s downfall, by presenting Jekyll as arrogant and conceited.