Mr Enfield’s account starts of in a mysterious way as he tells us that it was three o’clock of a ‘black winter’s morning’ when nobody is awake and everyone is inside for the cold and that he was walking through a part of town where “there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps.” As we absorb the circumstances Enfield starts to talk as if saying a hypnotic chant “Street after street, and all the folk asleep – street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession, and all as empty as a church.” The two word ‘procession’ and ‘church’ bring to mind the thoughts of a funeral something related with traumatic times and a morbid horror feeling. So the scene is set lonely, cold, dark with only the flickering street lamps playing shadow games in the night.
The description of the street in the first chapter reinforces this theme of duality. The street is described as merely an anonymous street in London, whose shop fronts "like rows of smiling women" have a brightness that stands out in contrast to the dingy neighbourhood. And yet on this street, two doors from the corner, stands a dreary, Gothic house, which "bore in every feature the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence." As we proceed further in the novel, Jekyll¹s house itself will be seen to have an innate duality: congenial, prosperous, respectable, as well as threatening, mysterious, and sinister. This duality is manifested by each of its two facades: the respectable, Jekyll side of the house stands out in contrast with the seediness of its neighbouring structures. The Hyde façade is bleak, neglected, and lowering on a street in which it stands out among thriving, well-kept, and prosperous commercial structures.
As the details of the event are unrolled more horror is revealed but in a bizarre way, “for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground” this is portrayed in such a calm and peaceful way that it emphasises the lack of care from the supposed ‘juggernaut,’ and to ignore the innocent cries of a young girl increases his evil in the judgmental eyes of the reader. As Stevenson stresses the innocence of the girl “the girl was…more frightened” the horror and evil of the ‘juggernaut’ is exaggerated making the scene more horrible.
Doctors jobs are to preserve life and they deplore violence in every form and so when this “cut-and-dry apothecary …turned sick and white with a desire to hill [the juggernaut]” every time he saw him we can not but sense the evil which these people feel towards the ‘prisoner.’
Compared to the last paragraph or so this paragraph progresses at quite a pace as if to reflect the speed at which people’s emotion turned from nothing to sadness to hate. Stevenson writes as if there is a final explanation as to whom this mystery figure is but does not let on and instead let’s the suspense build. He occasionally allows a small amount of information out just to wet the appetites and keep up an atmosphere of mystery and confusion. This atmosphere one of controlled suspense, a gradual building up of a sense of horror and destruction is achieved through a slow accumulation of unemotional detail, which begins in this chapter.
