jekyll Flashcards
Jekyll explains in his letter that when his moral code wasn’t engaged, Hyde came out. Jekyll describes how his evil side was always alert, waiting in the background to project itself. The idea here is that Jekyll’s evil side was a constant impulse that Jekyll had to actively suppress.
At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde.
When Utterson confronts Jekyll about Hyde, who murdered a man, Jekyll frantically tries to reassure Utterson that Hyde will never be heard from again. Jekyll is desperate to convince Utterson that he will have nothing more to do with Hyde, foreshadowing his struggle to terminate his Hyde entity.
Utterson, I swear to God,” cried the doctor, “I swear to God I will never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done with him in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does not want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of.
In his final statement, Jekyll describes how he was finally forced to make a choice between Jekyll or Hyde. To go with Jekyll would mean killing his natural desires. To go with Hyde would mean to kill his professional life and forever be alone. Jekyll says the decision isn’t as clear-cut as it seems, for at least with Hyde, there would be no conscience interfering with his peace of mind.
To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost.
