Jekyll & Hyde: Paying particular attention to Stevensons descriptions of the city at night, discuss how Stevenson uses descriptive passages to evoke a mood of dread.

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Paying particular attention to Stevenson’s descriptions of the city at night, discuss how Stevenson uses descriptive passages to evoke a mood of dread.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is written in a very factual, ‘case-study’ like way. Stevenson has done this to make the story seem true to life and to reflect the no-nonsense attitudes of the middle class men the story is about. However, this story line is interspersed with descriptive and elaborate sections that Stevenson has used to bring emotion to the story. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published as a ‘Christmas “Bogey Tale” ’ and so the idea of the story was to shock and horrify, but also entertain the readers. Stevenson uses these emotive sections of descriptive passage to evoke a mood of dread and terror in the readers that they would be looking for when reading the story. The terror in the story is accentuated because most of the ‘action’ takes place at night, where important themes in the story come into play to make the setting more ominous. For instance, the conjunction of fog and darkness can be very unnerving because it completely impairs one’s ability to see. The street lighting, a new addition to nighttime London, had troubling connotations because some argued it enabled crime to take place more efficiently rather than preventing it. The way Stevenson personifies the city to make it a living being around the characters creates an intimidating setting because if the whole city is alive at night, there is nowhere to hide from it.

Stevenson has used fog as a main theme in Jekyll and Hyde. As well has having fog physically present in the city, it also acts as a metaphorical barrier between the characters and the truth about Jekyll and Hyde until the very end of the book, when the fog is ‘lifted’. As mentioned in the introduction, most of the book is written in a very factual and unemotional way, however one of the richest descriptive passages in the book is in the chapter ‘The Carew Murder Case’. Stevenson uses elaborate and detailed metaphors and imagery to conjure up the idea of fog in the reader’s minds. Utterson describes the fog as “a great chocolate covered pall lowered over heaven” (Page 23). The word “pall” has negative connotations, because it is connected with death as it can be used to describe the smoke given off from crematoriums. This negative idea is contrasted by the fact it is “chocolate covered”, although this could be a slightly sarcastic description of the fog as everything associated with chocolate – a sweet taste, wealth and love, is everything that the fog is not. The idea that the fog is “lowered over heaven” gives the impression that the fog is separating the city from heaven above, or even just ‘the heavens’ – a clear blue sky, or a night sky with stars. As well as this Stevenson implies that the fog has cut off the moon as well, by saying the city is “under the face of the fogged city moon” (Page 14, ‘Search for Mr Hyde’) The fact he says “city moon” implies that the moon is meant for the city, but it has been taken away from them by the fog, and all that is left is an image of the “face” of the moon. This evokes a mood of dread because the spiritual idea of being cut off from heaven by a thick fog similar to the smoke given off by burning bodies is a horrible thought. To further explore the idea of being shut off from heaven, Stevenson personifies the fog as “these embattled vapours” which has militaristic connotations, to give the impression that the fog is actively preventing the city from reaching heaven, like an army would prevent enemies from coming into their country. There is also a reference that the fog might be killing the city, when it is described as a “drowned city” (Page 28, ‘Incident of the Letter’) by Mr Utterson. The idea that the fog is suffocating the city, or drowning it in it’s vapours is an emotive description that would evoke a mood of terror in the reader, because it is a horrible way to die. The war reference evokes a mood of dread in the reader because it could be associated with brutal killings that often occur in the war, which are chilling to think about.

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Street lighting was a relatively new concept revolutionised in London at the time that Jekyll and Hyde was written. Street lighting was supposed to reduce crime, but in actual fact having light twenty-four hours a day made crime levels worse, because it enabled the criminals to work more efficiently, and effectively. This is because they could see what they were doing as well as carry out the crime quicker and with more ease because they needn’t trouble themselves with holding a lamp. Indeed street lighting was not received overly positively by the people of London, as is reflected in ...

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