OK, let's unpack this. Usually when we think
about monsters, we look outwards. Right, yeah,
like into the dark. Exactly. We look to the dark
alleys or deep oceans, haunted houses. We're
always looking for the thing that's lurking in
the shadows, waiting to strike from the outside.
Oh, absolutely. It's an external threat. Yeah,
but what if the ultimate monster isn't hiding
in the dark at all? What if the most terrifying
creature you could ever possibly encounter is
the one looking back at you when you stare into
your own bathroom mirror? That is such a chilling
concept. It really is. And welcome to the deep
dive, by the way. Today, we are taking an intensive
look at a text that has been just so thoroughly
absorbed into our cultural DNA that I think we've
we've actually forgotten where it came from.
Oh, entirely. And more importantly, we've forgotten
how utterly terrifying it originally was. Yes.
We're talking about Robert Louis Stevenson's
classic 1886 narrative, the strange case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The mission for you
today, as we go through these original documents,
is to completely strip away, like, over a century
of pop culture baggage. Which is a lot of baggage,
let's be honest. Oh, it's immense. We want to
jettison all those cartoon parodies, the Halloween
costumes, the Incredible Hulk comparisons, you
know, all the jokes. We are returning to the
highly complex, chilling original text to deconstruct
how this narrative is actually built. Because
what we have here, it isn't just a spooky campfire
story. I mean, it is a... brilliant psychological
thriller. It's a masterclass in the architecture
of a mystery, and honestly, a profoundly unsettling
look at the duality of human nature. And the
terrifying loss of control. Exactly. It's a profoundly
unsettling concept, and what makes this source
material so compelling, and frankly, what is
almost always lost in the cinematic adaptations,
is exactly how the information is revealed to
you as the reader. Oh, the pacing of it. Right.
If you think about it, Stevenson makes this brilliant,
kind of counterintuitive choice. He doesn't just
hand you a first -person confession right out
of the gate. No, which is what you'd expect today.
Right. We don't start inside the chaotic mind
of a mad scientist. Instead, we are forced to
view this deeply unnatural, supernatural event
through the eyes of the ultimate repressed buttoned
up Victorian bystander. It's all filtered through
this incredibly strict society. Exactly. We have
to piece the horror together through, you know,
legal documents, hearsay, forged letters, and
the incredibly strict societal codes of 19th
century London. Which is such a brilliant narrative
choice, really, because it forces you to do the
detective work alongside a man who actively does
not want to find the answers. He really doesn't.
He's fighting it the whole way. He is. And that
brings us to the man who serves as our primary
lens for this whole nightmare. Mr. Gabriel John
Utterson. Good old Utterson. The text introduces
him with this absolutely incredible description.
It says he was a lawyer with a rugged countenance
that was never lighted by a smile, cold, scanty,
and embarrassed in discourse, backward in sentiment,
lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable.
I always love that last part. Right. I mean,
dusty and dreary and yet somehow lovable is quite
the dating profile. It really is, but it's a
very specific, carefully constructed type of
character. And Stevenson elaborates on his austerity
in ways that are crucial to understanding the
whole book. Like his drinking habits. Yes, exactly.
For example, the text notes that Utterson drinks
gin when he is alone, specifically to mortify
a taste for vintages. Wait, I have to pause there.
He doesn't drink gin because he likes it. No.
He drinks it to actively punish his own desire
for good wine. That is just, that's wild. He's
purposely making himself miserable. Right. Furthermore,
he loves the theater, but he hasn't crossed the
doors of one for 20 years. This is a man whose
entire existence is defined by restraint. He
is essentially a walking monument to keeping
one's impulses entirely ruthlessly in check.
He really is the patron saint of Victorian repression.
He absolutely is. And his best friend, or at
least his most consistent companion, is his distant
kinsman, Richard Enfield. And the text actually
makes a point to say that it was a, quote, nut
to crack for many what these two even saw in
each other. because they seem so mismatched or
at least so boring together. Exactly. They go
on these Sunday walks and people report that
they say absolutely nothing to each other. They
look completely dull and seem visibly relieved
when someone else shows up to interrupt them.
Which sounds like a terrible time. It does. I
have to push back a little on this because on
the surface, considering a totally silent awkward
walk, the chief jewel of your week seems Completely
bizarre. It definitely does to a modern reader.
But then again, if you really think about it,
is it that different from two people today sitting
on a couch in the exact same room, just staring
at their phones for three hours in dead silence?
Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a really good point. It's
a shared isolation. You are physically together,
but you are entirely locked inside your own head,
carefully curating your internal world while
projecting a completely blank slate to the outside.
That is an excellent comparison. And it hits
exactly what Stevenson is doing here. It is a
shared isolation. And that dynamic functions
as a perfect microcosm for the society they live
in. Because everyone is doing it. Exactly. Everyone
in this narrative and in 19th century upper class
London, by extension, is hiding their true thoughts.
They are keeping to themselves, maintaining the
surface at all costs. The facade of respectability
is the actual currency. of their world. Right
and it's on one of these silent shared isolations
that the entire plot gets kicked into motion.
The famous walk. Yeah, they are walking down
a by street and Enfield points out a specific
door. It's in this sinister block of building
thrusting forward on the street, no windows,
just a blistered, disdained door that looks like
it's suffered prolonged negligence. Tramp strike
matches on it. I think it's his. Yep. Vagrant
strike matches on it. And seeing this door prompts
Enfield to break the silence and tell what he
calls the story of the door. And we really need
to look closely at the details of Enfield's story,
because the mechanics of how this society reacts
to trauma are deeply revealing. It's so weird
how they react. It is. So Enfield describes walking
home at 3 o 'clock on a black winter morning,
the streets are empty, lit up like a procession,
but totally void of people. It's an eerie...
almost theatrical stage setting. Very atmospheric.
Right. And he witnesses two figures approaching
an intersection, a little man stumping along
and a young girl of maybe eight or 10 running
as hard as she can. And they collide right at
the corner. And what happens next is so shocking
because of how casually it's described. The total
lack of emotion in the act. Yes. The text says
the man trampled calmly over the child's body
and left her screaming on the ground. Enfield
says it sounds like nothing to hear, but it was
hellish to see. A juggernaut. Yeah, he said it
wasn't like a man, it was like some damn juggernaut.
So Enfield chases the guy down, grabs him by
the collar, and brings him back to the screaming
child. And this is where the societal reaction
completely throws me. Let's examine that reaction,
particularly the crowd that gathers and the doctor
who arrives to check on the trampled girl. Because
the doctor is supposed to be objective, right?
Exactly. Enfield describes this doctor as the
usual cut -and -dry apothecary, about as emotional
as a bagpipe. But every single time, this highly
rational, unemotional doctor looks at the man
who we, of course, know as Mr. Hythadown. The
doctor turns sick and white with a desire to
kill him. Just instantly. Yes. It's not just
anger. It's an immediate... visceral physical
hatred. The women in the Child's family are described
as wild as harpies. Everyone just instantly,
physically loathes this guy. So what do they
do? Do they drag him to the police? Do they lock
him up? You would think so. No. Because killing
him is out of the question and going to the police
man's a public fuss, they do the most intensely
Victorian thing possible. They threaten his reputation.
It's unbelievable. It really is. They tell him
they will make a scandal that will make his name
stink from one end of London to the other. They
literally weaponize gossip instead of the law.
And Hyde's response is a kind of black sneering
coolness. He understands their currency perfectly.
He says no gentleman but wishes to avoid a scene.
He knows exactly what buttons to push. He does.
So they screw them up to 100 pounds in damages
for the child's family. To get the money, Hyde
takes them to that very door, whips out a key,
and comes back with 10 pounds of gold and a check
for the balance. And here comes the twist. Right.
But the check is signed by a name that Enfield
refuses to mention out loud to Utterson, though
he notes it is a very well -known and celebrated
name. And we, the audience, know from the jump
that the name on the check is Dr. Henry Jekyll.
Of course. Now Enfield immediately assumes the
check must be a forgery because in his mind,
why on earth would a highly respectable famous
man give this absolute monster a signed check?
It doesn't compute for him. It doesn't. But they
hold hide hostage, wait until the bank opens,
cash the check, and the teller confirms it's
completely genuine. And this leads Enfield to
a very specific and I think wildly flawed conclusion.
The blackmail theory. Yes. He assumes it's blackmail.
He figures this highly respectable man is paying
through the nose for some youthful indiscretion.
Enfield even casually dubs the place with the
door blackmail house. I mean, I have to stop
here because that is a wildly It's quite a stretch.
You see a monster literally trample a child,
and your first thought is, oh, his friend must
have partied too hard in college and is paying
him off. It seems absurd to us, yes. But this
assumption is a crucial piece of the psychological
puzzle Steventon is building. The instinct of
the Victorian gentleman is always, without fail,
to assume a mundane, predictable sin. They want
things to fit into neat little boxes. Exactly.
The indiscretions of youth coming back to haunt
a wealthy man is a storyline they understand.
It fits neatly into their societal framework.
They never suspect a supernatural anomaly or
a horrific scientific experiment because that
would require breaking their entire paradigm
of how the universe operates. So they just lie
to themselves. They assume the mundane because
it protects their worldview. And to protect that
worldview even further, Utterson and Enfield
agree to literally never talk about it again.
The silence again. Utterson says, let us make
a bargain never to refer to this again. Enfield
replies. With all my heart. It is the ultimate
manifestation of the societal code of silence.
We see something terrible, we sweep it under
the rug, and we don't ask questions. It's repression
on a macro scale. Yeah, and Enfield actually
explains his philosophy on this. He says, starting
a question is like starting a stone rolling down
a hill. You sit quietly on top, and the stone
rolls and knocks over some bland old bird in
his garden, and the family has to change their
name. Basically, asking questions only ruins
reputations. Right. Mind your own business at
all costs. And if we connect this to the bigger
picture, this exact societal code of silence,
this intense suffocating repression where appearances
are everything and the truth is buried, is the
causal foundation for the entire tragedy. It's
just the whole stage. We have to understand this
world to understand the villain. This environment
directly sets the stage for why a prominent,
respected man like Dr. Jekyll, who has natural,
perhaps darker human impulses, would feel so
trapped, so scrutinized, and so desperate that
he would feel compelled to invent a literal chemical
escape hatch. The pressure was just too much.
The society created the pressure cooker. Jekyll
just built the valve. Wow. And that valve, that
physical manifestation of his escape, is where
the horror truly begins. Because Mr. Utterson,
despite agreeing to never speak of it, is a lawyer.
And he has documents. He does. And he has a very
specific piece of paper in his safe that turns
this piece of street gossip into a personal nightmare.
Utterson is Dr. Jekyll's lawyer, and he is holding
Jekyll's will. And knowing what he now knows
about Hyde, the contents of this will are suddenly
terrifying. The will is an offense to Utterson.
both as a legal professional and as a lover of
sanity. It's completely unhinged. It is. The
document stipulates that in the case of Henry
Jekyll's death, all his possessions pass to his
friend and benefactor, Edward Hyde. Which is
bad enough. But what is far more disturbing is
the second clause. In the case of Jekyll's disappearance
or unexplained absence for any period exceeding
three calendar months, Edward Hyde is to step
into Jekyll's shoes entirely, free from any burden
or obligation. It's absolute madness to Utterson.
I mean, he goes home and starts having literal
nightmares. The scroll of lighted pictures. Yes.
The text gives us this visit image of Utterson
tossing in the gross darkness of the night, seeing
a scroll of lighted pictures playing on a loop
in his mind. He sees the juggernaut crushing
the child and then a faceless figure standing
by his friend Jekyll's bed, ripping the curtains
open and forcing Jekyll to rise and do its bidding.
He's fixated on the face. Utterson's rational
mind cannot handle the facelessness of it. He
decides he absolutely has to see Hyde's face
to understand the hold he has on Jekyll. He says,
if he be Mr. Hyde, I shall be Mr. Seek. A rare
moment of humor from Utterson. Right. He just
starts haunting that door at all hours of the
night. And his patience eventually pays off.
He intercepts Hyde in the dark. He steps up and
touches him on the shoulder. And the physical
description we get from this interaction is paramount
to the philosophy of the book. How does Hyde
react? Well, when touched, Hyde shrinks back
with a hissing intake of breath. When Utterson
asks to see his face, Hyde hesitates, then fronts
about with an air of defiance. And the impression
he leaves on Utterson's incredibly stoic, unemotional
mind is profound. Utterson is instantly filled
with what he calls disgust, loathing, and fear.
He notes these specific physical details. He
says, hide is pale and dwarfish. He gives an
impression of deformity without any nameable
malformation. That's the key phrase. Right. He
has a displeasing smile. He speaks with a husky,
whispering, somewhat broken voice. But Utterson
realizes that none of these physical traits alone
explain the sheer nausea he feels. It's something
deeper. Utterson thinks to himself, there must
be something else. There's something more if
I could find a name for it. He calls him troglodytic.
He says he reads Satan's signature upon his face.
So I have to ask you, what exactly is this unnameable
deformity? Because it's not a limp, right? It's
not a hunchback or a scar. Exactly. Hyde does
not have a physical handicap in the traditional
sense. His deformity is entirely moral. Moral
deformity. Yes. To understand why people feel
physically ill around him, why they get a sinking
of the pulse, an icy pang in their blood, we
have to look at Stevenson's view of human nature.
Okay, lay it on me. Normal human beings are a
complex mixture of good and evil. We all have
duality. We are composites. Therefore, we are
used to interacting with composite souls. But
Edward Hyde is not a composite. He is pure, unalloyed
evil. There is absolutely no good in him to soften
the impact of his presence. The human soul when
confronted with pure unadulterated evil, instinctively
recoils. The physical disgust that Utterson,
the doctor, and the women feel is their own soul's
allergic reaction to a being that should not
naturally exist. That makes so much sense. It's
like an evolutionary terror, like a visceral
warning system. Exactly. And we learn later from
Jekyll's confession exactly why Hyde is physically
smaller and younger than Jekyll, because Jekyll
had spent 90 % of his life engaged in effort,
virtue, and control. His evil side, his selfish
side, was, as he puts it, less robust and less
developed. It's an underdeveloped muscle. Right.
So when that evil is finally isolated and given
physical form by the potion, it literally manifests
as a smaller, younger entity. It hasn't had the
decades of exercise that his virtuous side has.
It's a brilliant physicalization of a moral state.
But while Hyde might be smaller, The danger of
this pure, unchecked evil becomes undeniable
nearly a year later. The escalation is terrifying.
It really is. Yeah. And it escalates from trampling
a child to a horrific headline -making atrocity,
the Karoo murder case. Yes. The scene is so brutal
it shatters the whole illusion that Hyde can
be managed. It's October. Nearly a year has passed
since the trampling. The perspective shifts entirely
to a maidservant who lives alone in a house not
far from the river. A very cinematic shift. It
is. She's sitting at her window on a cloudless,
brilliantly lit moonlit night. The text says
she was romantically given, feeling at peace
with the world. She sees an aged, beautiful gentleman
with white hair, who we later learn is Sir Danvers
Carew, a member of parliament walking down the
lane. Notice how deliberately Stevenson sets
this stage. It is serene, romantic, and peaceful.
The moonlight, the beautiful old man, the romantic
maid, he is maximizing the contrast to amplify
the shock of the violence that is about to occur.
It's the calm before the storm. Exactly. So Carew
meets a very small gentleman lane whom the maid
recognizes from previous encounters as Mr. Hyde.
Karoo bows and asks a polite question, and then
without any warning, without any provocation
whatsoever, Hyde explodes. The text says, Hyde
broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping
his foot, brandishing his heavy cane like a madman.
When Karoo takes a step back in sheer surprise,
Hyde breaks out of all bounds. He clubs the old
man to the earth. Just horrifying. And the language
here is incredibly violent. With ape -like fury,
he was trampling his victim underfoot and hailing
down a storm of blows under which the bones were
audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the
roadway. I mean, the maid actually faints from
the horror of watching it. The sheer brutality
is staggering. Yeah. But what is absolutely vital
to understand about this murder... is the complete
lack of a logical motive. Right, he doesn't gain
anything from it. Exactly. Yeah. If you think
about typical true crime, you look for motive.
Money, jealousy, revenge. Hyde doesn't rob Karoo.
He leaves his purse and his gold watch right
on the body. He destroys Karoo simply because
of a furious propensity to ill. Just violence
for the sake of violence. Yes. As Jekyll later
explains in his confession, Hyde strikes in the
spirit in which a sick child might break a plaything.
Evil, in its purest form, doesn't need a reason.
Its very nature is to destroy what is good, innocent,
and beautiful simply because it exists. It's
so unsettling. And in a terrifying twist for
Mr. Utterson, the cane that Hyde used to beat
the man to death, which actually snapped in half
from the sheer force of the blows, is recognized.
The physical evidence. Right. The police bring
the broken half to Utterson and he knows it immediately.
It's a rare heavy wood stick that Utterson himself
had gifted to Dr. Jekyll years ago. And this
physical piece of evidence The broken stick forces
Utters's hand. He can no longer passively observe.
It moves the mystery out of the dark alleyways
and into the realm of paper trails, logic, and
what we will soon see is Jekyll's incredibly
dangerous illusion of control. Utterson realizes
his friend is inextricably linked to a high -profile
murder. So he has to confront him. So Utterson
goes directly to Jekyll's house. And Jekyll looks
deathly sick. He's feverish. He swears to God
he will never set eyes on Hyde again. He claims
he's done with him, that Hyde is safe and will
never be heard of again. And to prove it, Jekyll
produces a letter. Yes. Jekyll hands Edison a
letter written in an odd, upright hand and signed
by Edward Hyde. The letter essentially states
that Jekyll, his benefactor, need not be alarmed
for his safety because Hyde has sure means of
escape. Which seems convenient. Right. Utterson
asks how the letter arrived. Jekyll claims it
was handed in by a messenger. But when Utterson
questions Poole, the butler, Poole insists absolutely
nothing was handed in except by the regular post.
So Utterson, who is thoroughly confused, takes
this letter back to his office. And he sits down
with Mr. Guest, his head clerk. Now Guest isn't
just a clerk. He's a great student and critic
of handwriting. He's an amateur graphologist.
He loves analyzing writing. He does, and I love
the atmospheric detail here. They are sitting
by the fire, drinking a particular old wine that
has long dwelt unsung in the foundations of the
house. It's this cozy, safe, hyper -rational
environment where men solve problems with logic.
Utterson shows Guest the letter, calling it a
murderer's autograph, asking for his professional
opinion. And Guest studies it with immense passion.
He notes it's an odd hand. And then, by pure
coincidence or perhaps narrative fate, a servant
enters with a dinner invitation from Dr. Jekyll.
Oh man, the timing. Guest looks at the invitation,
then he looks at the murderer's letter. He puts
them side by side. He sedulously compares them.
Here's where it gets really interesting. Guest
says to Utterson, there is a rather singular
resemblance. The two hands are in many points
identical, only differently sloped. It is a massive
turning point. It is the exact moment the physical
evidence breaks the boundary between the two
supposed individuals. But Utterson gets it wrong
again. Utterson, because he is so locked into
his rigid Victorian worldview, draws the completely
wrong conclusion. He thinks Henry Jekyll forged
for a murderer. His blood runs cold. He thinks
his friend is covering up a crime by forging
a letter from the killer. He thinks it's a mundane
legal cover up. He's still trying to put it in
a neat legal box. But the truth is much more
profound. The identical handwriting proves a
terrifying philosophical point. You can change
your clothes, you can change your stature, you
can even chemically change your face, but you
cannot completely sever the underlying identity.
The foundation remains the same. The muscle memory
of the soul is still there. Precisely. And it
spectacularly exposes Jekyll's intense hubris.
Earlier in the story, Jekyll told Utterson, the
moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde. Famous
last words. He thought of everything. I really
want - you, the listener, to pause and think
about that. Think about your own separate accounts.
Today, we obviously might not have a bubbling
red potion that physically changes our bone structure,
but we absolutely, constantly curate different
personas. Oh, without a doubt. Think about it.
You have your highly professional polished work
self. You have your family self. And then maybe
you have your anonymous internet self, the burner
account. The modern high. Exactly. You log into
a forum or Reddit or Twitter without your real
name. You feel a chemical rush of freedom because
the consequences are stripped away. You might
say something cruel or controversial or unhinged,
because it's not you saying it. It's the avatar.
It's disconnected from your main identity. Right.
We think we've built firewalls between these
identities. We think the VPN, or the fake name,
is the potion. But what happens when those worlds
accidentally bleed into one another? What happens
when you leave the tab open, or someone doxes
the account? When the handwriting matches up,
the collapse is devastating. The fallout is catastrophic
because you can't actually partition your soul.
The actions you take in the dark still belong
to you. It is a total delusion of control. Jekyll
believed the firewall was impermeable, and Utterson's
rational mind desperately tries to protect that
same delusion by assuming forgery and blackmail,
because dealing with a forged letter is easier
than dealing with a fractured soul. He'd rather
deal with a felony than a monster. Exactly. But
the narrative is about to violently break those
boundaries of rationality, and it starts by destroying
the story's most scientific empirical mind. Yes,
and that brings us to the sudden shocking tragedy
of Dr. Lanyon. So after the Karoo murder, Hyde
completely disappears. And for two months, Jekyll
actually comes out of seclusion. He's back to
his old self doing charities, entertaining friends.
He seems at peace. He's on his best behavior.
It's like he's sober. But then on the 12th of
January, his door is suddenly shut to Utterson
again. And it stays shut. So Utterson goes to
visit their mutual friend Dr. Lanyon to see if
he knows what's going on. The physical change
in Lanyon is horrifying. As we noted earlier,
Lanyon was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red -faced
gentleman. He was full of life. But now Utterson
observes he has his death warrant written legibly
upon his face. He looks like a ghost. His flesh
has fallen away. He looks visibly older and balder.
But it's not physical decay that is most striking.
It is a deep -seated, vibrating terror of the
mind. Lanyon says to Utterson, I have had a shock,
and I shall never recover. Utterson naturally
mentions Jekyll, hoping they can all reconcile,
and Lanyon just holds up a trembling hand and
says, I wish to see or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll.
I'm quite done with that person, and I beg that
you will spare me any allusion to one whom I
regard as dead. He completely cuts him off. A
week later, Lanyon takes to his bed, and less
than a fortnight later, he is literally dead.
We have to pause here and have a fundamental
question. What kills Dr. Lanyon? He doesn't die
from a physical attack by Hyde. He doesn't catch
a Victorian disease. He dies from a profound
ontological shock. His reality just breaks. His
entire perception of reality is utterly shattered.
Remember who Lanyon is. He represents rigid empirical
establishment Victorian science. He had previously
dismissed Jekyll's theoretical metaphysical work
as unscientific balderdash. He's the ultimate
skeptic. He believes only in what he can measure
and quantify. But when he is forced to witness
the impossible, which we later learn in a sealed
letter, is the moment he watches Hyde drink the
potion and transform back into Henry Jekyll right
in front of his eyes, his mind literally cannot
process the data. It's too much for him to handle.
He writes in his final letter, My life is shaken
to its roots. Sleep has left me. The deadliest
terror sits by me at all hours of the day and
night. He dies because his reality breaks. He
cannot live in a universe where such a thing
is possible. It's terrifying. He basically dies
of an existential panic attack that never ends.
And shortly after Lanyon's death, Utterson and
Enfield are on another one of their silent Sunday
walks. They step into the court outside Jekyll's
laboratory. It's full of premature twilight.
Very gloomy. Setting the mood again. And there,
sitting close beside a half -open window, taking
the air with an infinite sadness of mean, like
some disconsolate prisoner, is Dr. Jekyll. This
is the famous incident at the window. Utterson,
trying to be a good friend, suggests Jekyll come
out for a walk to whip up his circulation. Jekyll
sighs and says it's quite impossible he dare
not, but he agrees to talk with them from the
window. And then it all goes wrong. And then,
as they are chatting, the text says, The words
were hardly uttered before the smile was struck
out of his face and succeeded by an expression
of such abject terror and despair as froze the
very blood of the two gentlemen below. The window
is instantly thrust down with a bang. Utterson
and Enfield are left standing in the courtyard,
pale, with an answering horror in their eyes.
Utterson just repeats, God forgive us, God forgive
us, and they turn and walk on in silence. What
they witnessed, though. They couldn't fully comprehend
the mechanics of it was the moment the internal
struggle became externally visible. Jekyll was
not choosing to change and to hide anymore. He
wasn't taking a potion. He was being violently,
involuntarily overthrown from within in mid -sentence.
If the firewall completely collapsed, the separation
he thought he controlled was just gone. I do
have a question about all this, though. A point
to push back on regarding Jekyll's choices. We
know from Lanyon's letter that when Jekyll was
in a desperate bind, he had transformed into
Hyde in public and couldn't get back into his
own house to get his potion. He sent a letter
to Lanyon for help. Yes, the letter with the
specific instructions. He told Lanyon to break
into his cabinet, take a specific drawer of chemicals,
and wait for a messenger. Why Lanyon? Why send
your darkest, most monstrous, unbelievable secret
to the very man who openly mocked your scientific
theories for a decade? Why not send him to Utterson,
who is notoriously tolerant, who helps men in
trouble, and who already knew what Hyde looked
like? That is a profound question. On a purely
practical, logistical level, Jekyll needed a
medical man. He needed someone who could plausibly
break into a doctor's cabinet and retrieve specific
chemical compounds without alerting the authorities
or the servants. Lanyon had the medical authority
and the gravitas to pull that off without drawing
immediate police suspicion. OK, logistically
that makes sense, but I think there's much more
to it psychologically. I think it was partly
desperation, sure, but I also wonder if it was
a subconscious, incredibly cruel desire by Hyde
to prove his superiority. Oh, absolutely. Lanyon
doubted Jekyll's genius. He called it Balderdash.
Hyde, acting on Jekyll's deep -seated, repressed
resentment, goes to Lanyon to show them exactly
how real the Balderdash is. It's like a magician
forcing a hardcore, arrogant skeptic to watch
a real, undeniable miracle, knowing full well
it will break their brain. It's an act of intellectual
revenge. You said I was crazy. Watch this. I
think that interpretation is spot on. It is a
punitive display of power. It perfectly demonstrates
the escalating dominance and cruelty of Hyde.
He wants to punish the establishment that rejected
Jekyll. But the horror at the window and the
terror of Lanyon are just... glimpses. We're
building to the grand finale. We are. The ultimate
confrontation requires actually breaking down
the physical barriers Jekyll has erected to hind
his failing experiment. This brings us to the
climax of the outward narrative, the siege of
the cabinet. Yes, the last night. Mr. Utterson
is sitting by his fireside after dinner and he
receives a surprise visit from Poole, Jekyll's
longtime butler. Poole is absolutely terrified
he won't even sit down. He says Mr. Utterson
there is something wrong. He says he's been afraid
for about a week and can bear it no more. He
thinks there's been foul play. The atmosphere
Stevenson builds for this night is incredibly
evocative. It's a wild, cold, seasonable night
of March. The wind is howling, making talking
difficult. The streets are unusually bare of
passengers. It's almost apocalyptic. When they
finally arrive at Jekyll's house, the entire
staff of servants, men and women, are huddled
together about the hearth in the hall like a
flock of sheep. The housemaid breaks into hysterical
whimpering when she sees Utterson. The terror
in the house is palpable. It's a mutiny born
of absolute dread. Poole leads Utterson out to
the back garden, to the door of the laboratory
cabinet. He knocks and says Utterson is asking
to see him. A voice from within answers, tell
him I cannot see anyone. And Poole looks at Utterson
and asks, was that my master's voice? Utterson
has to admit it. He admits it seems much changed.
And Poole says, changed? No, sir. Masters made
away with, he was made away with eight days ago
when we heard him cry out upon the name of God.
Let's break down the agonizing reality of this
final week that Poole describes. Poole explains
that the entity locked in the cabinet has been
crying night and day for some sort of medicine.
It writes orders on slips of paper and throws
them on the stairs. Just desperate notes. Poole
has been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists
in town. Every single time he brings the drug
back, there's another paper telling him to return
it because it is not pure. We actually get to
read one of these notes. It starts out composed
trying to maintain the Victorian facade. Dr.
Jekyll presents his compliments to Messers Mall.
He assures them that their last sample is impure
and quite useless. But then the panic and the
emotion break loose and the handwriting deteriorates
and he scribbles, for God's sake, find me some
of the old. And Poole reveals he actually saw
the creature. He came suddenly into the theater
and saw the figure digging among the crates,
searching for the drug. Poole says the hair stood
upon his head like quills. It cried out like
a rat and whipped upstairs. Poole insists it
was not his master. It was a dwarf. It was Hyde.
And the piecing. Yes. Furthermore, Poole tells
Utterson that he heard the creature pacing the
floor all night. And once he heard it weeping.
Weeping like a woman or a lost soul. That specific
detail weeping like a lost soul is so haunting.
It completely strips away the terrifying, powerful
juggernaut image of Hyde and leaves us with a
pathetic, cornered animal. It's the end of the
line. Utterson and Poole realize they have to
break down the door. They grab an axe and a kitchen
poker. Utterson gives fair warning, I must and
shall see you. If not of your consent, then by
brute force. And the voice from inside cries
out, Utterson, for God's sake, have mercy. Utterson
recognizes the voice as Hyde's. Poole swings
the axe. It takes five heavy blows to burst the
lock. They peer inside and the scene they find
is eerily domestic, which makes it even creepier.
A nice fire going. A good fire glowing, the kettle
singing, things laid out for tea. But right in
the middle of the floor lies the body of a man,
sorely contorted and still twitching. It's Edward
Hyde. He's dressed in clothes far too large for
him. He's just drowning in Dr. Jekyll's clothes.
He has a crushed glass file in his hand, and
there's a strong smell of kernels hanging in
the air. Utterson knows immediately he's looking
at the body of the self -destroyer. Hide committed
suicide rather than face the gallows. They search
everywhere for the body of Dr. Jekyll, expecting
to find him murdered and hidden in a closet,
but there's no trace of him. What they do find
on the business table is a large envelope addressed
to Utterson. the final puzzle pieces. Inside
is a new will, leaving everything to Utterson
instead of Hyde. A brief note from Jekyll telling
Utterson to go home and read Lanyon's narrative
and a sealed packet containing Jekyll's full
final confession. But before we get to that confession,
we have to talk about the physical evidence they
find on the tables, because this is the key to
the whole tragedy. They find various measured
heaps of white salt on glass saucers. Poole looks
at it and says, that is the same drug that I
was always bringing him. This reveals the ultimate
cosmic tragedy of the impure salt. Yes. This
is perhaps the most brilliant philosophical twist
in the entire book. Jekyll's entire experiment,
his entire catastrophic escape from morality,
was based on a fluke. A total accident. In his
confession, Jekyll explains that his original
provision of the salt began to run low. He sent
out for a fresh supply, mixed the draft, drank
it, and it was entirely without efficiency. It
didn't work. He realizes then that his first
supply was impure. It was an unknown impurity,
a mistake at the chemical factory, which lent
efficacy to the drag. The pure stuff was useless.
As he scoured all of London for more, every new
mathematically perfect pure batch failed him.
It's an incredible irony. I mean, think about
his goal. Jekyll sought to completely separate
his identity. He wanted to distill human nature
into its absolute pure forms, pure good and pure
evil. He wanted to unmix the soul. The only thing
that actually allowed him to perform this act
of ultimate purification was a literal impurity
in the chemical compound. It's poetic justice.
It's almost as if the universe or the laws of
nature actively rejected his attempt at perfect
moral purity. Nature requires the mixture. It
requires the gray area. You cannot exist as a
pure absolute. That is a profound observation.
The universe itself denies the absolute separation
he desires. The flaw in the salt mirrors the
unavoidable flaw in his philosophy. With the
physical mystery finally solved by the broken
door of the dead body and the useless white salt,
Utterson goes home to finally open that last
letter. The moment of truth. And this brings
us to the internal psychological mechanics of
how it came to this. We are finally let inside
the mind of the monster. This final document
changes everything. Jekyll starts by explaining
his core philosophy. He says that because of
his dual nature, his intense desire to be a respected,
grave public figure, and his equally intense
secret desire for undignified pleasures, he was
driven to reflect deeply on the hard law of life.
And he comes to this realization, which is the
thesis of the book, man is not truly one, but
truly two. He theorizes that man is ultimately
a polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independent
denizens, meaning we are made up of many different
selves. But in his own life, he focused solely
on the duality of good and evil. He wanted to
split them up. He'd grumped of housing these
elements in separate identities. He thought if
the unjust could go his way delivered from the
aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin
and the just could walk steadfastly doing good
things without being exposed to disgrace by the
evil twin, life would be relieved of all that
was unbearable. It's the ultimate fantasy of
having your cake and eating it too. So he compounds
the drug and his description of the very first
transformation is brutal. He talks about racking
pangs, a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea,
and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded
at the hour of birth or death. It's a violent
birth. But then as the agony subsides, he feels
something incredibly sweet. He says he feels
younger, lighter, happier in body. He feels a
heady recklessness, an unknown but not an innocent
freedom of the soul. He knows instantly, looking
in the mirror, that he is tenfold more wicked,
sold a slave to his original evil. And the terrifying
part, the thought delights him like wine. If
we connect this to the bigger picture, this entire
final confession reads as a terrifyingly accurate
modern clinical description of substance abuse
and addiction. Stevenson outlines the pathology
of addiction perfectly, decades before it was
commonly understood in this way. Oh, absolutely.
So what does this all mean for Jekyll? Let's
trace the steps because it matches the cycle
of addiction perfectly. It starts as an experiment
in the laboratory. The first dose is taken with
a strong glow of courage, pushing a boundary.
Exactly. The experiment phase. Then it moves
to recreational use. He talks about how he would
drink the cup doff the body of the noted professor
and assume the thick cloak of Edward Hyde. He
smiled at the notion. He found it humorous. He
sets up the house in Soho. He establishes the
illusion of control. He's compartmentalizing.
He says, I did not even exist. Whatever he had
done, Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain
of breath upon a mirror. He literally says the
addict's mantra, I can stop whenever I want.
He thinks he has total immunity from consequences.
But then the biological tolerance builds. He
says the power of the drug began to waver once
it failed him entirely and he had to double and
once treble the amount. He requires increasing
dosages to achieve the same high. And then come
the blackouts and the total loss of baseline
control. Two months before the Karoo murder,
he goes to bed as Henry Jekyll, feeling fine.
But he wakes up with odd sensations. He looks
at his hand resting on the sheets. Jekyll's hand
is large, firm, white, and professional. But
it's not his hand. But the hand he sees on the
bedclothes is lean, corded, knuckly, of a dusky
pallor. He had awakened as Edward Hyde without
taking the drug. The balance of his nature was
being permanently overthrown. His body was defaulting
to the addiction. He realizes he has to choose.
To cast his lot with Jekyll means giving up those
secret pleasures forever. To cast it with Hyde
means becoming friendless and despised. So he
makes desperate vows of sobriety. For two months
he lives a life of extreme severity. He does
good works. He enjoys an approving conscience.
He is dry. The inevitable honeymoon phase of
sudden sobriety. But, as he notes, time obliterates
the freshness of his alarm. He begins to be tortured
with throws and longings, as of Hyde struggling
after freedom. And in an hour of moral weakness,
he relapses. He compounds and swallows the transforming
draft. And because he had been repressing it
so hard for months, he says, my devil had been
long caged. He came out roaring. The relapse
is catastrophic. The pent -up energy explodes.
He commits an unspeakable crime. He flees back
to his lab, terrified of the gallows. He vows
never to transform again, locks the door to his
laboratory, and physically grinds the key under
his heel. He labors to relieve suffering for
months. He is the model citizen again, terrified
straight. But the dependency is no longer just
chemical. It is deeply psychological. And this
leads to the most crucial, terrifying moment
in the entire narrative, the incident in Regent's
Park. Yes. This is the moment that completely
blew my mind when rereading it. He's sitting
on a bench in the sun in January. He isn't planning
to take the drug. He hasn't touched it in months.
But his animal within is licking the chops of
memory. He's fantasizing. He starts comparing
himself to other men. He compares his active
goodwill and charity with the lazy cruelty of
their neglect. He has a vainglorious thought
about how great he is. He smiles at his own superiority.
And at the very moment of that arrogant, proud
thought, a qualm comes over him, a horrid nausea.
And when it passes, he looks down and his clothes
are hanging formlessly on shrunken limbs. He
has become Edward Hyde in broad daylight, in
a public park, completely involuntarily. He doesn't
transform because he takes the potion. He transforms
because he has an arrogant thought. The pride
is the trigger. The drug is no longer needed
at all. The chemical is irrelevant now. The moral
failing itself, the hypocrisy of thinking he
is better than everyone else while secretly harboring
these dark memories is what physically brings
out the monster. His soul is so corrupted that
a single bad thought alters his biology. It is
the ultimate consequence of his dual life. The
evil has become self -sustaining. Jekyll notes
that the hatred between the two identities becomes
absolute. Jekyll hates Hyde because Hyde is a
hellish inorganic horror that is usurping his
life. But Hyde's hatred for Jekyll is different.
Yeah, Jekyll says Hyde cares nothing for him.
Hyde remembers Jekyll only as a mountain bandit
remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself
from pursuit. That is such a vivid, devastating
image. It's completely parasitic. Evil is entirely
parasitic. It doesn't love the host. It only
uses the host for survival, for money. and for
shelter from the law. Hyde resents Jekyll's despondency.
He plays ape -like tricks on him, scrawling blasphemies
in his books, burning his father's portrait.
He tortures the host body. Hyde is terrified
of the gallows, which is the only reason he doesn't
destroy Jekyll completely. His love of life is
incredibly strong. But as the impure salt runs
out, the transformations become constant. Jekyll
can only maintain his true form under the immediate
stimulation of the drug. He can't even sleep.
Whenever he falls asleep, he wakes as Hyde. He
becomes a creature eaten up and emptied by fever,
occupied by one single thought, the horror of
his other self. And it ends with him hurriedly
writing this confession, knowing that in half
an hour, the last dose will wear off and he will
permanently become Hyde. He doesn't know if Hyde
will die on the scaffold or find the courage
to commit suicide, but he lays down his pen,
bringing the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll
to an end. Wow, just wow. It is a devastating,
relentless conclusion. If we synthesize the takeaways
from this journey, from Mr. Utterson's silent
repressed walks in the gloomy London streets
all the way to the shattered bay's door of the
cabinet, we see that Stevenson isn't just writing
a spooky story about a monster. It's a massive
warning. He is writing a profound warning about
the danger of extreme repression and the fallacy
of control. He's entirely dismantling the illusion
that we can cleanly separate our dark impulses
from our daily lives without consequence. You
can't just put your sins in a separate box, bury
it in the backyard, and expect the box to hold
forever. Eventually, the box rots, and what's
inside gets out. And for you, the listener, the
application to modern life is inescapable. We
may not have a bubbling red potion, but we have
endless avenues to create secret identities.
The internet, mostly. The internet, as we discussed.
offers a profound anonymity that functions very
much like Jekyll's potion. It offers a holiday
from morality, a way to step out of your reputation
and indulge impulses without consequence. But
Stevenson warns us that the character we cultivate
in the dark, the impulses we feed in secret,
will eventually demand to walk in the daylight.
You become what you practice. Think about the
very ending of the book. Jekyll runs out of that
original batch of impure salt. He knows the end
is coming because he can't replicate the specific
flaw in the chemistry. But what if he had found
the right salt? What if he had an endless supply?
Exactly. What if he had accidentally discovered
exactly what that impurity was and he could have
kept synthesizing the drug flawlessly forever
with an unlimited supply? It's a terrifying hypothetical.
Right. Would Jekyll have eventually lived happily
in his hypocrisy? Would he have just continued
being a beloved charitable saint by day and a
murderous unchecked monster by night until he
died of old age with zero consequences? Or does
the very nature of the human soul guarantee that
a house divided against itself cannot stand?
That the balance would tip anyway. Even with
an infinite supply of the potion, would the monster
in the mirror have eventually reached it out
and shattered the glass anyway? A question that
remains is chilling today. as it was in 1886.
Until next time, keep an eye on your reflections.