Language and narrative

The story is told in different ways:

• Chapters 1 to 8: a third-person narrator follows Utterson, so we only know what he knows.
• Chapter 9: Lanyon's letter, in the first person.
• Chapter 10: Jekyll's statement, in the first person.

Along the way, there are wills, letters and notes. The documents feel like evidence in a case, which makes the impossible story seem real. Each narrator only knows part of the truth, so the reader puts the pieces together, like a detective.

Stevenson describes Hyde again and again as an animal:

• he meets Utterson ‘with a hissing intake of the breath’ (Chapter 2), like a snake;
• he kills Carew ‘with ape-like fury’ (Chapter 4);
• Poole describes him moving ‘like a monkey’ (Chapter 8).

This animal imagery links Hyde to Darwin's ideas: he is the primitive beast inside a civilised man. It also makes him seem less than human, so the reader feels the same disgust as the characters.

Stevenson often refuses to tell us things.

• Enfield can't describe Hyde: ‘He is not easy to describe’ (Chapter 1).
• Jekyll never says what his secret pleasures were, only that they were ‘undignified’ (Chapter 10).
• Lanyon won't describe what Jekyll told him: ‘I cannot bring my mind to set on paper’ (Chapter 9).

These gaps make the reader imagine something worse than anything Stevenson could describe. They also mirror the secrecy of the gentlemen in the story.

Jekyll's statement is formal, with long, carefully balanced sentences, like a scientist's report. But as he describes losing control, his language breaks down.

He even struggles to speak of Hyde as himself: ‘He, I say—I cannot say, I.’ (Chapter 10). Switching between ‘he’ and ‘I’ shows that his identity has split in two.

The statement ends as he is about to become Hyde for ever: ‘I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end’ (Chapter 10).