First Chapter of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

First Chapter of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ is a novella, short novel,

which was published in the Victorian era. It has a gothic mystery

story genre and has a mysterious, serious tone. The overall novella is

set in London.

This essay will analyse how the author captures the reader’s interest

and introduces the key ideas in chapter 1 of ‘The Strange Case of Dr

Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’ This essay will evaluate how the author, Robert

Louis Stevenson, uses different language, how RL Stevenson uses

imagery, structure and form, and the settings to capture the reader’s

interest.

The key ideas in chapter 1 of ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr

Hyde’ are: duality of human nature, beast in man and reputation. When

‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ was written it was

believed that people had two different personalities, or also known as

ones Doppelgänger. This falls under the section of duality of human

nature. Reputation was important to people because if someone lost it

they would find it hard to get it back.

RL Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and had a sickly

childhood. He was an only child and his parents were hoping big things

from him. Stevenson travelled a lot in his life and was often ill. In

1885 Stevenson wrote ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,’ but

it wasn’t published until January of 1886.

This essay will first cover how RL Stevenson captured the reader’s

interest using the literary devices, language, imagery, structure and

form, and setting. The language section will analyse the atmosphere,

sentence structure, metaphors, similes and personification. The

imagery section covers motif, symbols and Victoria...

... middle of paper ...

...own and often printed,” and as you find out last in

the novella this was Jekyll’s name on the cheque. This would make the

reader want to read, to see how Hyde got this cheque with another mans

name on it.

This essay title was answered by first covering the literary devices

used in chapter 1 of, ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,’

these literary devices were language, imagery, settings and structure

and form. The second part of this essay covered the key ideas in

introduced in chapter 1; the key ideas used were duality of human

nature, reputation and beast in man.

this is a great novella with a fantastic twist at the end, but the

problem for the modern reader is that as this novella is so well

known, they cannot read it as a mystery, as they already know Jekyll

and Hyde are the same person. It is a mystery story that is no longer

a mystery.