Halloween. A day of ghouls and demons, skeletons and screams, horror and…candy? Halloween was a holiday that always puzzled me. I loved the candy, but never understood how that factored into the original equation. Halloween was originally meant to be a day where people dressed up to scare the devil, not to scare the tar out of some cute little fairy children. But, even the original purpose for the holiday is rather ridiculous. There is no way as mortal man that we can scare the devil. Yet, I digress. For the sake of those who enjoy a good scare and a good fright, I have attempted to make this month’s substance more intense. For that very reason I have read one of my favorite, original, horror novels, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
“It was on the Moral Side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both…If each, I told myself, could but be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable…”1
What is Dr. Jekyll saying here? If you haven’t read the story or don’t know of the gimmick in the book, I will explain. But be warned this is a HUGE spoiler. Dr. Jekyll spent his growing up years yearning for a life of undisciplined decisions and actions, but he also had a reputation to uphold and a life to live. Thus, he locked his wicked thoughts deep within the recesses of his mind, only to be taken out when he was alone in the darkness of his room. He treated those thoughts like treasures and seemed to pride himself on them. It was these very thoughts that brought him to the conclusion that each man has a duality complex. Good versus evil. Light versus dark. And it was these thoughts that propelled him into making the formula which eventually changed him into Mr. Hyde.
There’s a bit in the book where Dr. Jekyll gives a theory on Hyde, saying that he is only one-tenth of the man Jekyll is, because of
the good that Jekyll did before the potion. However, it seems that from the bottling up of the evil thoughts and desires, Mr. Hyde is ten
times stronger than Dr. Jekyll. In fact, near the end of the story Dr. Jekyll “fights” against the will of Mr. Hyde for the ownership of the body they “both” possess.
“…I had but the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions of Hyde… In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only the immediate stimulation of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll.”2
In the end Mr. Hyde wins. That is the horror of the story, that no matter the good that Jekyll did in his lifetime, his own good couldn’t save him. Jekyll could not in himself wipe out his evil doings. In the attempt of making a physical duality, where Dr. Jekyll could do his own thing, and Mr. Hyde could be as evil as he wanted to be, but no remorse or feeling would be transferred to the other party, he failed. Dr. Jekyll always felt horrified and monstrous when he thought of Hyde’s doings, whereas Hyde, he had no remorse.
I think as humans, there is a small truth to this. Heard of the “free will of man?” We do what we most want to do. If at the time we want to do evil, we do evil, because it’s our will. But what about good? Can we choose good? What if the evil within us is ten times stronger, then can we choose good? Is there an ultimate good that can cure each Jekyll of his or her own Hyde?
—Rupert Anndelle
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
—Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV)
1 Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Public Domain: iBooks, 1894), 132.
2 Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Public Domain: iBooks, 1894), 164-165.
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