Mr Hyde is presented as a very dark and sinister character. Hyde " was small and very plainly dressed, and the look of him, even at a distance, went somehow against the watcher's inclination". When Mr Utterson is speaking to Hyde, mentally he described Hyde as having "displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with the sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice. He is described in animalistic terms, for the first time Mr Utterson speaks to Hyde outside his house, when Mr Utterson calls out his name, "Mr Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of breath." Then at the end of the conversation, " The other snarled into a savage laugh". Jekyll describes Hyde as " the animal within me licking the chops of memory". Stevenson uses inhuman phrases when describing Hyde, he describes him as impulsive, amoral, impatient, and a mad man. The reactions that Mr Hyde gets when he meets people are of hatred. Mr Utterson got a feeling of loathing and "gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation". Mr Enfield had felt pure hatred when he first saw him and described the doctor as turning "sick and white with the desire to kill him". The maid that witnessed Sir Danvers Carew's murder, passed out after seeing what Hyde had done to the man.
Sir Danvers Carew's murder is meant to shock the reader, as it is described so horrifically and graphically. The gruesome details cause the maid to faint. The "innocent old man" is walking up the street on the opposite side to Hyde, the old man "bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness" the Sir Carew spoke a while, however Hyde did not answer all of a sudden he " broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on like a madman". Then as if he had no second thought " Mr Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth". The maid at this fainted, and when recovered called the police.
Jekyll has a very odd relationship with Hyde, he does not want Hyde there, as his experiment, is to try to perform the experiment, so that he could turn himself into a purely good person. However, he cannot live without him, because he is dependent on Hyde being there. Jekyll when in Hyde's body hides behind Hyde, however when in his own body Hyde hides behind Jekyll's body. As the novella unfolds, Jekyll can no longer control his addiction to Hyde, when he is asleep, of vulnerable, he slips in and out of the body of Hyde. In theory, one cannot live without the other, because in the end when Jekyll kills himself, Hyde also has to die with him.
The crime that Hyde commits are amoral, which means that he commits them with now conscience. When he tramples the girl, Jekyll covers for Hyde, by signing the cheque for the family, however when Hyde kills Sir Carew, Jekyll completely disassociates himself with Hyde, by saying that he is not giving refuge to a murderer, and that Hyde had left a letter, saying that he had left. Both Jekyll and Hyde indirectly killed Dr Lanyon, because when Lanyon witnessed Hyde's transformation into Jekyll, this shocked him, he fell ill from the shock, and eventually it killed him. You could almost say that Hyde kills Jekyll, because Jekyll is forced to kill himself to stop Hyde's reign of terror over the city of London.
At the end of the novella, Hyde overpowers Jekyll, and Jekyll suddenly realises, how despicable, and repulsive Hyde is. This repulsion and hatred for Hyde in the end makes up Jekyll's mind to kill them both. By Jekyll killing, himself he sets both him, and Hyde free, although it is Hyde who is found when the cabinet door is forced open. This is because when Jekyll dies, he is emotionally and physically venerable, and Hyde shines through. So theoretically, it is Mr Hyde continues to exist temporarily when Dr Jekyll is gone.
Therefore, I conclude that Stevenson explores the duality, which lies within man very well and aptly describes this phenomena in Jekyll's suicide note when he writes, " all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil". However, I feel that he has not truly exploited the capabilities that could have been developed when sculpting Hyde's character. Jekyll's original experiment was to try to create a purely good man, however, he just ends up destroying his experiment and eventually himself.
