The story is not narrated by either of the main characters, instead by an unknown. The narrator seems to look on to the story but does not know all the secrets of the characters; only Jekyll knew those things.
Hyde’s true identity is a mystery throughout the story; from the beginning nobody knows who he is, where he came from, or how he met Jekyll. It shows how they are two completely different people, one a good man who wouldn’t hurt a fly, the other an evil beast who has no feelings. This makes it more of a mystery why these two men would be friends with each other.
At first Jekyll is the stronger of the two, he has control over when Hyde comes and goes. Over time Jekyll takes more and more of the potion that turns him into Hyde, succumbing to temptation, which is already a sign of Hyde (evil) getting stronger and Jekyll (good) getting weaker. There is a lot of symbolism in the story, for instance, Hyde is of small stature because he has not been alive for as long ‘Particularly small and particularly wicked looking’, ‘pale and dwarfish’. Eventually, from being ‘used’ so much, Hyde got stronger and bigger in size and began to overpower Jekyll, and their positions are switched. One morning, Jekyll woke up as Hyde, without even taking the potion, not recognizing his own hand. ‘Lean, corded, knuckly…thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde’. Instead of Hyde being Jekyll’s favoured side, fun and outgoing, he is an evil who he now cannot escape.
Hyde represents the bad in Jekyll, everything Jekyll has been scared to do, Hyde does. Hyde lets out the stress in Jekyll in the form of another person, except he is in the same body but looks different. Symbolism is used to show how Hyde is at first small and weak as he is rarely used (evil is rarely used by Jekyll), but he becomes larger and stronger as he is in more use. Hyde is also the sexual side of Jekyll, which is implied but not stated, as this would shock Victorian readers. Sexuality is another side of Jekyll that is rarely used because in the days that this was written; anything sexual was seen as disgusting and bad.
How effectively does Robert Louis Stevenson account for the existence of Hyde and convey what he intends him to represent?
Robert Louis Stevenson uses an effective way of showing what Mr Hyde is to Dr Jekyll; instead of telling the readers at the beginning that Hyde and Jekyll share a body and are in a way the same person, he gives clues and lets the readers work it out for themselves or conclude it at the end of the story when Dr Jekyll’s confession is given.
From the fact that Jekyll and Hyde are never seen together, or that they share a bank account, most readers would not grasp that they are the same person unless they knew beforehand.
Hyde always exists in Jekyll, although he is not seen until Jekyll discovers the potion he made and is then only in body when Jekyll drinks the potion. I believe that even when Hyde is not fully in body, i.e. when Jekyll has not taken the potion, Jekyll starts to become him mentally; he is more daring and starts to lie to cover up for his wrong-doing. He uses Hyde as an excuse to himself for what he is doing, lying to himself about the evil he has helped to commit. ‘My devil had long been caged, he came out roaring’. This is a good idea from Robert Louis Stevenson as it gives a clearer impression to the readers about Jekyll and Hyde’s relationship with each other and shows their personalities and how they differ.
Another interesting way the existence of Hyde can be perceived is that he is the meaning of evil, ‘that child of Hell’ sent to destroy lives. One character saw himself as the person to hunt down evil, though in the end he was unsuccessful, ‘If he be Mr Hyde, I shall be Mr Seek’, a clever play on words suggesting evil against good. Black is often linked with evil, Hyde is only used during the night time when it is dark and he has dark hair, as opposed to Jekyll only being himself in the light and having fair hair; another difference between them. His general appearance also looks evil to those who see it; Hyde’s visage is described as ‘Satan’s signature on a face’.
