How effectively does Stevenson create a sense of horror through his descriptions of settings and characters in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

In the opening of the novella, Stevenson describes the door through which Hyde enters and exits.  The atmosphere that he creates is of a nervous and interested feeling because as he describes the door you mare nervous to know what lies behind it good or evil, also you are interested to know but still holding back a little so you are not fully committing yourself to who or it that lives behind the neglected door.  

“Nothing but a door on the lower storey and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence”.

The technique the author R.L Stevenson has used is personification where he describes the wall as “a blind forehead”.  By using the word “negligence” the author makes the reader picture this image of the door as awfully neglected and so they lead the reader to sense nervousness in whether it is good or evil that lurks behind the ignored entrance.  

Stevenson creates a setting for nightmare with his use of description.  Stevenson mainly sets the story in the hours of darkness and cleverly uses alliteration and similes to get the image of the various settings he has in his novella.  

“Glide more stealthily through sleepy houses, or move the more swiftly, even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamp lighted city”.

Stevenson’s cleverly uses alliteration of the words stealthily, sleepy and swiftly.   This creates a better image of the setting in the readers mind.  As the letter s has been alliterated it creates a feeling of uncertainty and anything could happen.  The letter s is associated with spooky things.  The choice of words is uncanny as this sets the scene for something very strange to happen.

Stevenson describes the streets of London as a setting for a nightmare by making comparisons between descriptions of London in the Carew murder section.

 “A marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back end of the evening; and there would be a glow of rich lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration”.

In this quote Stevenson makes best use of similes to make the image in the readers head more realistic.  In Stevenson’s descriptions he describes the many labyrinths and passageways in conjunction with the foul weather that seems to happen all the time.  Marvellous in the context means a few things so it was quite warm and unusual as it should be dark.  This is strange as they is also a vast amount of colours furthermore it suggests on its own something peculiar is going to happen, as the weather is unusual for the time of day.  

Mr Hyde describes Mr Hyde as a creature of nightmares when the reader first meets him he is described as disfigured.  This on it’s own suggests horror as you wouldn’t expect to find someone like this in any other genre.  It suggests an absence of reason, as the author does not explain why Hyde is so severely disfigured.  In the incident at the window chapter the writer mainly uses similes and metaphors to make the reader able to once again clearly see for them selves the look of Hyde, as he wanted them to.  Which was severely disfigured, strange and incredibly powerful for a man of his stature.  This is best seen when the writer writes, “it wasn’t like a man it was like a damned juggernaut”.  This shows the immense power Hyde has which is inhuman and more machine like which then again suggests that this book is a horror story.  As before there is an absence of reason to why he has this scary immense power.