Key quotations
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde quotation bank
Hyde
- ‘trampled calmly over the child's body’ (Chapter 1): calm, pitiless violence.
- ‘like some damned Juggernaut’ (Chapter 1): an unstoppable force, not a man.
- ‘He is not easy to describe’ (Chapter 1): his evil can't be put into words.
- ‘Something troglodytic, shall we say?’ (Chapter 2): primitive, less evolved.
- ‘Satan’s signature upon a face’ (Chapter 2): evil written on his face.
- ‘with ape-like fury’ (Chapter 4): animal violence.
- ‘like a monkey’ (Chapter 8): no longer human.
Key terms
Jekyll
- ‘a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty’ (Chapter 3): the respectable gentleman.
- ‘man is not truly one, but truly two’ (Chapter 10): the duality of human nature.
- ‘strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty’ (Chapter 10): the thrill of being Hyde.
- ‘My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring’ (Chapter 10): repression makes evil stronger.
- ‘He, I say—I cannot say, I.’ (Chapter 10): his identity splits.
- ‘I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end’ (Chapter 10): the last line.
Key terms
Utterson, Lanyon and the setting
- ‘lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable’ (Chapter 1): Utterson, the reserved narrator.
- ‘I incline to Cain's heresy’ (Chapter 1): Utterson won't judge his friends.
- ‘unscientific balderdash’ (Chapter 2): Lanyon's view of Jekyll's science.
- ‘I have had a shock’ (Chapter 6): Lanyon is destroyed by the truth.
- ‘blistered and distained’ (Chapter 1): the door, a symbol of Jekyll's hidden side.
- ‘a great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven’ (Chapter 4): fog, death and mystery.
Remember
Learn short quotations that work for several essays. ‘man is not truly one, but truly two’ fits Jekyll, Hyde, duality and science.