pass it on. With each transfer the dream grows
more powerful, and ultimately it will be fatal to the
party for whom it is intended when it finally
reaches its destination. The ultimate doom is
averted, not through ordinary means, but by un-
derstanding and applying the native African lore
that made it possible in the first place. This unusu-
ally effective novel was reprinted in the early 1960s
but has unaccountably been out of print ever
since.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeRobert Louis
Stevenson(1886)
The author of Treasure Islandand other classic ad-
venture stories occasionally dabbled with darker
themes in short stories such as “THE BOTTLE IMP”
and this short novel, which is such a familiar clas-
sic that even people who have never read the story
or seen any of several movie versions still have a
general idea of the plot. The term Jekyll and Hyde
has become a familiar description of conflicting
personalities within a single individual, and the in-
famous Mr. Hyde has become a classic villain of a
stature that rivals Bram STOKER’s vampyrrhic
DRACULAor Frankenstein’s monster.
The story is revealed to us through the eyes of
Utterson, a lawyer and close friend of Dr. Henry
Jekyll. Utterson hears from a companion, Richard
Enright, the story of a fiendishly cruel man who
ruthlessly attacked a child some time in the recent
past. Utterson correctly identifies the culprit as Ed-
ward Hyde, a disreputable and secretive new friend
of Jekyll’s who has recently been made the primary
beneficiary of the doctor’s estate. There is some-
thing about Hyde that repulses everyone he meets,
but he seems to be so thoroughly in Jekyll’s good
graces that he can intrude at odd hours of the
morning demanding financial support. Utterson,
predictably, suspects blackmail, but Jekyll resists
his efforts to pursue the matter further.
A year passes uneventfully, and the friendship
among Jekyll, Utterson, and another doctor,
Lanyon, slowly deteriorates through lack of contact.
The situation changes following the brutal and pub-
lic murder of Sir Danvers Carew by Hyde in front of
a witness. The police attempt to apprehend the
killer, but Hyde has disappeared completely. Jekyll
insists that he will never be found. Shortly after
these events, Jekyll becomes more reclusive than
ever, and Lanyon experiences some terrible shock
about which he will not speak but which has shaken
him so severely that his health takes a sharp turn for
the worse, and he dies a short while later.
Utterson’s failed attempts to renew his friend-
ship with Jekyll discourage him from further efforts
until he is summoned by Jekyll’s butler. His master
locked himself in one of his rooms several days pre-
viously, but now his voice sounds strangely differ-
ent and foul play is suspected. Sure enough,
Utterson recognizes Hyde’s voice and orders the
door broken down. By the time they effect entry,
Hyde is dead by his own hand, and Jekyll is
nowhere to be found, a mystery that is resolved
when Utterson pieces together the rest of the story
from letters left behind by both Jekyll and Lanyon,
who had become a party to the terrible secret.
Jekyll had long been fascinated by the di-
chotomy between good and evil impulses within
individuals, and he experimented with various
combinations of drugs until he finally hit upon a
formula that would allow him to separate the two.
To his surprise, when under the influence of his
evil self, he physically transformed, becoming
smaller and darker and having an indefinable air of
unspecific deformity. He finds a new freedom in
the experience, because as Hyde he can indulge all
of his baser impulses without being troubled by a
guilty conscience, while as Jekyll he pursues worth-
while and charitable goals untroubled by tempta-
tion. Unfortunately, the Hyde half wishes to
remain dominant, and eventually the transforma-
tions begin to occur without the use of drugs, as
Hyde forces himself into the ascendant. Jekyll’s ef-
forts to reverse the process fail when he is unable
to replicate his original formula.
Readers who had previously watched one or
another of the film versions might be surprised at
how relatively unmelodramatic the print version
is. To a great extent, this novella is a werewolf
story, with the drug taking the place of the full
moon and without the danger of contagion. It is
also a cautionary tale warning us against scientific
experiments that ignore the morality of the exper-
imenter’s choices and that fail to properly antici-
pate the outcome.Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 95