essay topics for dr jekyll and mr hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

By robert louis stevenson, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde essay questions.

Discuss Jekyll's progression throughout the novel and his fall from grace. What key moments and decisions determine Jekyll's fate? Identify these specific moments and analyze the aspects of Jekyll's character that force him to continue with his experiments.

Discuss the physical descriptions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and their respective homes (Jekyll's main house vs. Hyde's neglected laboratory cabinet) as they relate to major themes of the novel.

Stevenson creates a balance of realism and the supernatural. How does he integrate these concepts?

Discuss the concept of control in regard to Jekyll's relationship with Hyde. Is absolute control possible? Can one choose when to be completely good or evil? What does Stevenson's conclusion appear to be?

Discuss the novel's most violent events, including the trampled girl, Carew's murder, and Jekyll/Hyde's ultimate demise. What if any progression arises here and how does it parallel the progression of the novel?

Discuss the role of the city throughout the novel, both during the day and at night. How does the city contribute to the novel's progression? What role does it play?

Clearly, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an examination of the duality of human nature. Discuss the duality expressed in not only Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but also Utterson, Poole, and the city of London.

How does the notion of loyalty contribute to the novel? Discuss this in reference to Utterson, Lanyon, and Dr. Jekyll. Upon close examination, does loyalty help prevent or expedite violence and tragedy?

Discuss the possible meanings and relevance on the names Utterson, Jekyll, and Hyde in the context of the novel.

Compare and contrast Dr. Lanyon and Dr. Jekyll's approaches to scientific pursuits and manipulation of natural laws.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What is the story of Cain and Abel? What does it mean that Mr. Utterson says he inclines to Cain’s heresy in his dealings with others? Explain why you agree or disagree with this way of dealing with your acquaintances.

In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain murders his brother. In the above line, Utterson is citing his belief that one should stay out of other people's business.

3. Look back at chapter 3 (pg 26) – how has Jekyll changed since then?

Jekyll has become unsure of himself, sickly, faint, and desperate. He is not the self-assured, smooth faced man we met at the dinner party in the third chapter.

Sequence the events that happened in Chapter 8 “The Last Night” 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

You can check this out in chapter 8 summary below:

https://www.gradesaver.com/dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/study-guide/summary-chapters-7-8

Study Guide for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde study guide contains a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Summary
• Character List

Essays for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Frankenstein
• The Collective Mr. Hyde
• The Limitations of Language in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The Supernatural and Its Discontents in Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
• The Good Mr. Hyde

Lesson Plan for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Bibliography

E-Text of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde E-Text contains the full text of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

• Chapters 1-3
• Chapters 4-6
• Chapters 7-10

Wikipedia Entries for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

• Introduction

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Full Analysis and Themes

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The story for Jekyll and Hyde famously came to Robert Louis Stevenson in a dream, and according to Stevenson’s stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson wrote the first draft of the novella in just three days, before promptly throwing it onto the fire when his wife criticised it. Stevenson then rewrote it from scratch, taking ten days this time, and the novella was promptly published in January 1886.

The story is part detective-story or mystery, part Gothic horror, and part science fiction, so it’s worth analysing how Stevenson fuses these different elements.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: analysis

Now it’s time for some words of analysis about Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic 1886 novella. However, perhaps ‘analyses’ (plural) would be more accurate, since there never could be one monolithic meaning of a story so ripe with allegory and suggestive symbolism.

Like another novella that was near-contemporary with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , and possibly influenced by it ( H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine ), the symbols often point in several different directions at once.

Any attempt to reduce Stevenson’s story of doubling to a moral fable about drugs or drink, or a tale about homosexuality, is destined to lose sight of the very thing which makes the novella so relevant to so many people: its multifaceted quality. So here are some (and they are only some) of the many interpretations of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which have been put forward in the last 120 years or so.

A psychoanalytic or proto-psychoanalytic analysis

In this interpretation, Jekyll is the ego and Hyde the id (in Freud’s later terminology). The ego is the self in Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, while the id is the set of primal drives found in our unconscious: the urge to kill, or do inappropriate sexual things, for instance.

Several of Robert Louis Stevenson’s essays, such as ‘A Chapter on Dreams’ (1888), prefigure some of Freud’s later ideas; and there was increasing interest in the workings of the human mind towards the end of the nineteenth century (two leading journals in the field, Brain and Mind , had both been founded in the 1870s).

The psychoanalytic interpretation is a popular one with many readers of Jekyll and Hyde , and since the novella is clearly about repression of some sort, one can make a psychoanalytic interpretation – an analysis grounded in psychoanalysis, if you like – quite convincingly.

It might be significant, reading the story from a post-Freudian perspective, that Hyde is described as childlike at several points: does he embody Jekyll’s – and, indeed, man’s – deep desire to return to a time before responsibility and full maturity, when one was freer to act on impulse? Early infancy is the formative period for much Freudian psychoanalysis.

Recall the empty middle-class scenes at the beginning of the book: Utterson and Enfield on their joyless Sunday walks, for instance. Hyde attacks father-figures (Sir Danvers Carew, the MP whom he murders, is a white-haired old gentleman), which would fall in line with Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex and Jekyll’s desire to return to a time before adult life with its responsibilities and disappointments.

However, one fly in the Oedipal ointment is that Hyde also attacks a young girl – almost the complete opposite of the ‘old man’ or father figure embodied by Danvers Carew.

Nevertheless, psychoanalytic readings of the novella have been popular for some time, and it’s worth remembering that the idea for the book came to Stevenson in a dream. Observe, also, the presence of dreams and dreamlike scenes in the novel itself, such as when Jekyll remarks that he ‘received Lanyon’s condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed’.

An anti-alcohol morality tale?

Alternatively, a different interpretation: we might analyse these dreamlike aspects of the novel in another way and see the novel as being about alcoholism and temperance , subjects which were being fiercely debated at the time Stevenson was writing.

Here, then, the ‘transforming draught’ which Jekyll concocts represents alcohol, and Jekyll, upon imbibing the draught, becomes a violent, unpredictable person unknown even to himself. (This reading has been most thoroughly explored in Thomas L. Reed’s 2006 study The Transforming Draught .)

Note how often wine crops up in this short book: it turns up first of all in the second sentence of the novella, when Utterson is found sipping it, and Hyde, we learn, has a closet ‘filled with wine’. Might the continual presence of wine be a clue that we are all Hydes waiting to happen? Note how the opening paragraph informs us that Utterson drinks gin when he is alone.

This thesis – that the novella is about alcohol and temperance – is intriguing, but has been contested by critics such as Julia Reid for being too speculative and reductionist: see her review of The Transforming Draught in The Review of English Studies , 2007.

The ‘drugs’ interpretation

Similarly, the idea that the ‘draught’ is a metaphor for some other drug, whether opium or cocaine . Scholars are unsure as to whether Stevenson was on drugs when he wrote the book: some accounts say Stevenson used cocaine to finish the manuscript; others say he took ergot, which is the substance from which LSD was later synthesised. Some say he was too sick to be taking anything.

You could purchase cocaine and opium from your local chemist in 1880s London (indeed, another invention of 1886, Coca-Cola, originally contained cocaine, as the drink’s name still testifies: don’t worry, it doesn’t any more).

This is essentially a development of the previous interpretation concerning alcohol, and arguably has similar limitations in being too restrictive an interpretation. However, note the way that Jekyll, in his ‘full statement’ becomes reliant on the ‘draught’ or ‘salt’ towards the end.

A religious analysis

As such, the story has immediate links with the story Stevenson would write sixty years later. Stevenson was an atheist who managed to escape the constrictive religion of his parents, but he remained haunted by Calvinistic doctrines for the rest of his life, and much of his work can be seen as an attempt to grapple with these issues which had affected and afflicted him so much as a child.

The sexuality interpretation

Some critics have interpreted Jekyll and Hyde in light of late nineteenth-century attitudes to sexuality : note the almost total absence of women from the story, barring the odd maid and ‘old hag’, and that hapless girl trampled underfoot by Hyde.

Some critics have suggested that the idea of blackmail for homosexual acts lurks behind the story, and the novella itself mentions this when Enfield tells Utterson that he refers to the house of Mr Hyde as ‘Black Mail House’ as a consequence of the girl-trampling scene in the street.

As such, the novella becomes an allegory for the double life lived by many homosexual Victorian men, who had to hide (or Hyde ) their illicit liaisons from their friends and families. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote to his friend Robert Bridges that the girl-trampling incident early on in the narrative was ‘perhaps a convention: he was thinking of something unsuitable for fiction’.

Some have interpreted this statement – by Hopkins, himself a repressed homosexual – as a reference to homosexual activity in late Victorian London.

Consider in this connection the fact that Hyde enters Jekyll’s house through the ‘back way’ – even, at one point ‘the back passage’. 1885, the year Stevenson wrote the book, was the year of the Criminal Law Amendment Act (commonly known as the Labouchere Amendment ), which criminalised acts of ‘gross indecency’ between men (this was the act which, ten years later, would put Oscar Wilde in gaol).

However, we should be wary of reading the text as about ‘homosexual panic’, since, as Harry Cocks points out, homosexuality was frequently ‘named openly, publicly and repeatedly’ in nineteenth-century criminal courts. But then could fiction for a mass audience as readily name such things?

A Darwinian analysis

Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species , which laid out the theory of evolution by natural selection, had been published in 1859, when Stevenson was still a child. In this reading, Hyde represents the primal, animal origin of modern, civilised man.

Consider here the repeated uses of the word ‘apelike’ in relation to Hyde, suggesting he is an atavistic throwback to an earlier, more primitive species of man than Homo sapiens . This reading incorporates theories of something called ‘devolution’, an idea (now discredited) which suggested that life forms could actually evolve backwards into more primitive forms.

This is also linked with late Victorian fears concerning degeneration and decadence among the human race. Is Jekyll’s statement that he ‘bore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul’ an allusion to Charles Darwin’s famous phrase from the end of The Descent of Man (1871), ‘man […] bears […] the indelible stamp of his lowly origin’?

In his story ‘Olalla’, another tale of the double which Stevenson published in 1885, he writes: ‘Man has risen; if he has sprung from the brutes he can descend to the same level again’.

This Darwinian analysis of Jekyll and Hyde could incorporate elements of the sexual which the previous interpretation also touches upon, but would view the novel as a portrayal of man’s – and we mean specifically man ’s here – repression of the darker, violent, primitive side of his nature associated with rape, pillage, conquest, and murder.

This looks back to a psychoanalytic reading, with the ‘id’ being the home of primal sexual desire and lust. The girl-tramping scene may take on another significance here: it’s a ‘girl’ rather than a boy because it symbolises Hyde’s animalistic desire to conquer and brutalise someone of the opposite, not the same, sex.

There have been many critical readings of the novella in relation to sex and sexuality, but it’s important to point out that Stevenson denied that the novella was about sexuality (see below).

A study in hypocrisy?

Or perhaps not: perhaps there is something in the idea that hypocrisy is the novella’s theme , as Stevenson himself suggested in a letter of November 1887 to John Paul Bocock, editor of the New York Sun : ‘The harm was in Jekyll,’ Stevenson wrote, ‘because he was a hypocrite – not because he was fond of women; he says so himself; but people are so filled full of folly and inverted lust, that they can think of nothing but sexuality. The Hypocrite let out the beast’.

This analysis of Jekyll and Hyde sees the two sides to Jekyll’s personality as a portrayal of the dualistic nature of Victorian society, where you must be respectable and civilised on the outside, while all the time harbouring an inward lust, violence, and desire which you have to bring under control.

This was a popular theme for many late nineteenth-century writers – witness not only Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray but also the double lives of Jack and Algernon in Wilde’s comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). This is a more open-ended interpretation, and the novella does appear to be about repression of some sort.

In this respect, this interpretation is similar to the psychoanalytic reading proposed above, but it also tallies with Stevenson’s own assertion that the story is about hypocrisy. Everyone in this book is masking their private thoughts or desires from others.

Note how even the police officer, Inspector Newcomen, when he learns of the murder of the MP, goes from being horrified one moment to excited the next, as ‘the next moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition’. He can barely contain his glee. The maid who answers the door at Hyde’s rooms has ‘an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent’.

From these clues, we can also posit a reading of the novel which sees it as about the class structure of late nineteenth-century Britain, where Jekyll represents the comfortable middle class and Hyde is the repressed – or, indeed, oppressed – working-class figure.

Note here, however, how Hyde is repeatedly described as a ‘gentleman’ by those who see him, and that he attacks Danvers Carew with a ‘cane’, rather than, say, a club (though it is reported, tellingly, that he ‘clubbed’ Carew to death with it).

A scientific interpretation

The reference to the evil maid with excellent manners places Jekyll’s own duality at the extreme end of a continuum, where everyone is putting on a respectable and acceptable mask which hides or conceals the evil truth lurking behind it. So we might see Jekyll’s scientific experiment as merely a physical embodiment of what everyone does.

This leads some critics to ask, then, whether the novella about the misuse of science . Or is the ‘tincture’ merely a scientific, chemical composition because a magical draught or elixir would be unbelievable to an 1880s reader? Arthur Machen, an author who was much influenced by Stevenson and especially by Jekyll and Hyde , made this point in a letter of 1894, when he grumbled:

In these days the supernatural per se is entirely incredible; to believe, we must link our wonders to some scientific or pseudo-scientific fact, or basis, or method. Thus we do not believe in ‘ghosts’ but in telepathy, not in ‘witch-craft’ but in hypnotism. If Mr Stevenson had written his great masterpiece about 1590-1650, Dr Jekyll would have made a compact with the devil. In 1886 Dr Jekyll sends to the Bond Street chemists for some rare drugs.

This is worth pondering: the use of the ‘draught’ lends the story an air of scientific authenticity, which makes the story a form of science fiction rather than fantasy: the tincture which Jekyll drinks is not magical, merely a chemical potion of some vaguely defined sort. But to say that the story is actually about the dangers of misusing science could be a leap too far.

We run the risk of confusing the numerous film adaptations of the book with the book itself: we immediately picture wild-haired soot-faced scientists causing explosions and mixing up potions in a dark laboratory, but in fact this is not really what the story is about , merely the means through which the real meat of the story – the transformation of Jekyll into Hyde – is effected.

It’s only once this split has been achieved that the real story, about the dark side of man’s nature which he represses, comes to light. (Compare Frankenstein here .)

All of these interpretations of Jekyll and Hyde can be – and have been – proposed, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the popularity of Stevenson’s tale may lie in the very polyvalent and ambiguous nature of the text, the fact that it exists as a symbol without a key, a riddle without a definitive answer.

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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

34 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Before You Read

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 9-10

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Due to its place in pop culture, anyone reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde today is bound to be aware that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person, but this would not have been the case for someone reading the book for the first time in 1886. Does knowing the book’s mystery ahead of time lessen its impact? Why or why not?

Jekyll states in Chapter 10: “I hazard a guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens” (111). Discuss how this prediction has come true in today’s society. Are there ways in which people today manipulate or change their identities?

The author describes Utterson as “embarrassed in discourse” and “backward in sentiment” (47). What might Stevenson mean by these phrases, and how, if at all, do they relate to Utterson’s behavior in the book?

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70 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert louis stevenson.

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Introduction

Dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: plot summary, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: detailed summary & analysis, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: themes, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: quotes, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: characters, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: symbols, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: literary devices, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: quizzes, dr. jekyll and mr. hyde: theme wheel, brief biography of robert louis stevenson.

Historical Context of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Other books related to dr. jekyll and mr. hyde.

• Full Title: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• When Written: 1885
• Where Written: Bournemouth, England
• When Published: 5th January 1886
• Literary Period: Victorian
• Genre: Horror, Drama, Victorian Gothic
• Setting: The streets of London
• Climax: Utterson reads the narrative written by Lanyon before his death, which describes the horrific bodily transformation of Mr. Hyde into Dr. Jekyll, explaining everything that has happened so far in an absolutely incredible way.
• Antagonist: Mr. Hyde forms the antagonist of the tale until we realize that he is in fact the double of Dr. Jekyll.
• Point of View: A third person narrator tells the story with an omniscient view of characters but stays mostly with Mr. Utterson, which allows Stevenson to reveal things to the reader with suspense.

Extra Credit for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Strange Beginnings. Robert Louis Stevenson reportedly wrote the draft of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in an astonishing three days in a drug-induced fever.

Expensive Taste. Robert Louis Stevenson was known as “Velvet Jaket” as a young man because of his dandy-fied taste in clothes.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — Jekyll and Mr Hyde Moral

Jekyll and Mr Hyde Moral

• Categories: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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Words: 503 |

Published: Mar 20, 2024

Words: 503 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, moral ambiguity, psychological implications, societal reflection, relevance to contemporary society.

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Related Essays on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde is a novel which is arguably entirely about duality. The most obvious example is of course that of Jekyll and Hyde duality discussed in this essay, but [...]

With his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson presents encounters between several upstanding members of Victorian society and Mr. Hyde, a man who seems to disregard all social conventions in favor of selfishness and [...]

The story of Jekyll and Hyde from beginning to end has a vast mystery around it. The whole story is based on this mysteriousness leading straight away to crimes with no suspects in mind and a huge case ahead of them. The people [...]

Dr. Jekyll and Victor Frankenstein decided to push the boundaries of science and take the supernatural into their own hands. Both of the scientists’ experiments yielded creations that got out of control, but the men had very [...]

In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson employs Utterson as the narrator and voice of the novella, as well as the investigator or detective figure that allows the story to be ‘discovered’ dramatically by the reader. Utterson [...]

Stevenson uses many motifs in the novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One of them that stands out the most is duality and opposites which are used throughout the novel in every chapter. Duality comes from the [...]

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Lesson Plan for 'Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde': Writing Prompts & Essay Questions

• Donna Cosmato
• Categories : High school english lesson plans grades 9 12
• Tags : High school lesson plans & tips

Lesson Overview

Students discuss and develop essay topic ideas for Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Grade: High School, duration: 30 – 60 minutes

Objective: Students review basic writing process for essays and brainstorm ideas for essay topics. The emphasis for this lesson is writing compelling thesis statements, holding reader attention, and organizing and writing top-notch essays.

Prior Knowledge: This lesson builds on information gained during unit lesson plans on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde regarding vocabulary, character analysis, and group discussions of the short story.

Teaching Method

Procedure: Excellent essays contain key elements. Start the lesson by reviewing briefly the main elements of essay writing. Here are some suggested topics to cover:

• Selecting topics: topic ideas are specific rather than general with a main idea and two supporting ideas.
• Compelling headline: the thesis statement is like a movie trailer. It hooks the reader into the subject matter.
• Introduction: tells the reader what the essay is about, makes or breaks the essay depending on how interesting or how boring it is. Comparing it to sound bites of information on radio or television helps students visualize the importance of a provocative introduction.
• Outlining research materials: all the research in the world is useless if students cannot organize it and produce a finished essay. This part of the lesson plans shows students how to take notes, and organize materials to prepare for writing an outline format.
• Writing outlines and rough drafts: for this part of the lesson plan, review outlining and rough draft process. Remind students every essay must have a summary to tie information together for the reader.
• Creating the finished essay and proofreading: discuss the writing process and emphasis the importance of proofing essays prior to submitting them. A good tip is to suggest students read the essays out loud to catch grammatical errors.

Writing Prompts and Essay Questions

Try these writing prompts and essay questions in your classroom to help students get started on their essays. Copy the information on the board and brainstorm ideas for other creative essay topics for papers on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

• Describe the relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
• How is the relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde important in conveying the theme of duality?
• How does Stevenson portray the hypocrisy of Victorian society in the novella?
• Dr. Jekyll’s final fate is determined by what events?
• How does Stevenson use descriptive language and suspense to create a mood of terror?
• Why did Stevenson tell the story in third person rather than the first person? How effective is that?
• Analyze the progress of Dr. Jekyll experiments and transformations. How does his character change during the experiments?
• How does Jekyll view his relationship with Hyde? Is his analysis accurate or flawed? Why or why not?
• Analyze the role of the supporting characters. What is their importance and how do they impact the progress of the novel?

By the end of the lesson students should understand the writing process for completing interesting essays. They have selected their topics and started developing thought-provoking thesis statements. Results of the lesson are assessed based on the quality of the students’ essays.

Stevenson, R. L. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde PDF Worksheets

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

9 August 2024

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Enhance your students’ understanding and appreciation of the novel, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, with our comprehensive printable PDF educational resource. This meticulously crafted resource includes six interactive worksheets designed to support and deepen the learning experience. Key features include:

• Robert Louis Stevenson Fact File: Introduce your students to the life and works of Robert Louis Stevenson with a detailed fact file. This worksheet provides essential background information, helping students connect the author to his iconic works.
• Victorian Era Mind Map: Contextualize Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, within its historical period with a Victorian mind map. This worksheet helps students understand the cultural and historical backdrop of the novel, enriching their overall comprehension.
• Character Quotes: Engage your students with a focused study on significant quotes from key characters. This worksheet encourages close reading and analysis, helping students explore character motivations and developments.
• Character Spider Diagram: Facilitate a deeper understanding of the novel’s characters with a character spider diagram. Students can visually map out relationships, positive qualities and negative qualities, fostering a comprehensive grasp of character dynamics.
• Main Theme Flow Mind Map: Help students identify and analyse the central themes of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, with a main theme flow mind map. This worksheet guides students through the novel’s major themes, supporting critical thinking and thematic exploration.
• Question Planner: Prepare your students for assessments and discussions with a question planner. This worksheet encourages students to formulate and organize their thoughts on key questions, promoting effective study habits and critical analysis. This printable PDF resource is an invaluable tool for educators aiming to provide a structured and engaging approach to studying Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde. Download and print your educational resource today, and empower your students to explore the depths of Robert Louis Stevenson’s masterpiece. Answers not included.

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1 hr 10 min

Episode 237: “Best of” Series – “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” Pt. 2, Ep. 106 The Literary Life Podcast

This week on The Literary Life Podcast, we continue our remix of a past discussion of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If you missed last week’s episode, you will want to go back and catch Part 1. Angelina kicks of the book chat with a look at the format of the story and how it keeps us in suspense. Thomas brings up the idea of forbidden knowledge found in this book and the similarities between it and Frankenstein. Some other topics covered in this episode include the dangers of dehumanizing victims of crime, the nature of sin and addiction, the Renaissance idea of the well-ordered man, and the mythic qualities of this story. For a complete booklists and links to everything mentioned in this episode, including ways to connect with our hosts, please visit https://theliterary.life/237.

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Why pro-life candidates are reminding me of Jekyll and Hyde this year

( LifeSiteNews ) — If you think watching America’s elites try to outdo each other in callous disregard for pre-born life was already maddening, try watching from behind bars. Though incarcerated over 9 months now, I’m still able to follow current events. Nearly every week there’s a new story on abortion. Rarely is it good news.

Predictably, the 2024 campaign season is shaping up like the plot of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel  The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (which, by the way [plot spoiler] , ended with the part good, part evil Dr. Jekyll, succumbing to his alter ego, the purely evil Mr. Hyde, who then ended both their lives by committing suicide). To me, it looks like we’re once again faced with choosing between a party of shameless, morally bankrupt, yet supremely confident pro-murder radicals and a party of hesitant, morally confused, and inarticulate wannabe diplomats. To put it another way: they advance their position, we apologize for ours.

President Joseph Biden, who by all accounts has never met an abortion he didn’t like or an ethical standard he didn’t sink beneath, has made killing babies a central focus of his campaign. Biden boasts about authorizing doctors to approve abortion drugs remotely, authorizing pharmacies to mail those drugs anywhere in the nation, funding abortion overseas, and trying to expand abortion funding stateside. In February’s state of the union address, he praised women who took the lives of their children and vowed to “make Roe v. Wade the law of the land.”

Meanwhile, former president Donald J. Trump, “the most pro-life president ever,” who did all the normal things pro-life presidents are supposed to do and more, gave us the Supreme Court that finally overturned Roe v. Wade and became the  only  president to ever address the March for Life, now behaves like he regrets ever getting involved. Last year, Trump called Florida’s 6-week abortion ban a “terrible mistake” that was “too harsh,” and this year complained that Arizona’s short lived total abortion ban “went too far,” calling on lawmakers to ” remedy it.” After weeks of toying with the idea of a 15-week national abortion ban that, in his view, “the most powerful people in the pro-life movement” and “the vast majority of Republicans” would support, Trump finally washed his hands of the debate and announced that abortion would be an issue for the states alone to decide.

They advance their position, we apologize for ours (even Trump, who never apologizes for  anything ).

What about those states, then? Glancing at a map of the US, things certainty appear to be improving: a broad swath of states across the South and Midwest now “ban abortion” completely!

Not so fast. Since 2020 the abortion rate has been  increasing .

While the most solidly pro-life states have banned clinical abortion, pro-choice governments are digging in everywhere else. Several legislatures have made abortion a constitutional right, and 7 states have held referendums to do the same. In each case, voters chose death. California pays women to travel there and murder their babies. It may now be more inconvenient to obtain a clinical abortion, but it’s by no means impossible.

Meanwhile, no state bans chemical abortion. Pro-life governments have prohibited the  sale  of abortion pills, but not their use. A pregnant woman who somehow obtains these drugs and uses them to kill her preborn child is immune from prosecution  everywhere .

Since these drugs can kill until the 12th week of pregnancy, the majority of abortions will still take place. Pro-life America has altered  how  babies die, but they still die.

I see this same pattern being repeated everywhere. They advance their position; we apologize for ours.

After the 2022 Dobbs decision, Michigan should have automatically upheld its pre-Roe total abortion ban. Instead, Governor Gretchen Whitmer refused to enforce the law until a state referendum enshrined abortion into Michigan’s constitution! By contrast, in 2023 Virginia Republicans proposed 3 separate pro-life bills, each weaker than the one before: the first, a standard clinical abortion ban, would have permitted moms to kill at home. The second, Governor Glenn Youngkin’s, would have permitted any abortion before 15 weeks, while the third would have allowed all but the most late-term abortions. Each bill went down in defeat, thus demonstrating the futility of compromised legislation.

In the US Congress, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spent 10 months heroically blocking military promotions to protest Biden’s policy of paying for the abortion related travel of female service members. That is, until December 2023 when he inexplicably abandoned the effort (partially due, no doubt, to harassment from fellow Republicans). And just this month in the US Senate, both parties demonstrated a sickening disregard for the image of God with competing bills designed to virtue signal support for IVF procedures.

In April of this year, when the Alabama Supreme Court correctly ruled that embryos created via IVF were legal persons, that state’s Republican dominated legislature hurriedly passed new legislation to protect IVF clinics from prosecution, essentially giving them a license to continue making and destroying tiny human beings in perpetuity.

It’s not like all the news has been bad. I’m encouraged that anti-abortion leaders are finally sounding the alarm on the chemical abortion trade, and that some are willing to castigate Donald Trump for throwing preborn kids under the bus when it suits him. But for every step forward we seem to take one backwards. I don’t know if we’ve made any net progress since the fateful summer of 2022. The truly sad part is that these retreats need not have happened. They were motivated by the irrational terror that protecting the innocent is somehow an embarrassing position to hold that life is a liability.

Witness the guidance issued this March by the National Republican Congressional Committee to Republican candidates seeking election in 2024. Obviously concerned that abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, the guidance doesn’t advise Republicans to champion a consistent defense of human life but rather that they highlight Democratic support for those disgusting but less common late-term abortions, express empathy for women and discuss “common sense solutions” (i.e. compromise).

READ: America on the brink: How do we turn around our political and spiritual crisis?

Donald Trump, who has a knack for verbalizing what other politicians only think, pretty much summed it up in September of 2023 when, in an interview with Kristen Walker of “Meet the Press,” he said:

You have to go with your heart. But beyond that you also have to get elected, okay? And if you don’t have the 3 exceptions [rape, incest and the mother’s life], I think it’s very, very hard to get elected.

Trump himself has several times blamed Republican losses in the 2022 midterms on the fact that certain candidates were too strictly anti-abortion, and offended voter sensibilities.

As recently as April he reiterated this point in a campaign video, saying:

Follow your heart on this issue. But remember, you must also win elections to restore our culture and, in fact, to save our country, which is currently and very sadly a nation in decline.

There you have it. To save the nation and fix the culture, you must win elections (in other words, cultural change is a top-down process). To win elections, you must pander to pro-choice voters. This is nothing new. It’s straight out of the GOP playbook. It’s the campaign strategy followed for 50 years.

Again and again, they advance their position, we apologize for ours.

To someone sitting in prison, hoping their defiance of pro-death policies might inspire their countrymen to forsake cowardice and finally rescue preborn children from the slaughter that daily awaits thousands, all this talk about winning elections can be heartbreaking. Last year, upon learning of Trump’s rather pathetic 15-week national abortion ban idea, and the Susan B. Anthony List’s support for such a measure, my friend Laura Geis, serving a multiple month sentence for taking part in a red rose rescue, wrote:

I’m in a jail cell … screaming to be heard, watching and listening to your rhetoric … [you] playing with the lives of the unborn in a fear driven panic over whether or not we will WIN THE ELECTION. What? This is crazy talk!

I’ve always been an activist, never a professional political strategist. The vicious cycle of appeasement that pro-life candidates and office holders have stuck to for so long makes no sense to me. Yes, I realize that polls report most Americans think abortion should be “legal most of the time.” But I also know that the average pro-choice person has never heard the arguments against abortion, knows almost nothing about fetal development or what abortion does to a human embryo, and has never witnessed anyone suffer or sacrifice anything in defense of preborn children.

When people are finally exposed to the truth (which is, by the way, all on our side), remarkable transformations often occur. During my 15 years of educational activism, I’ve seen minds change right in front of me! I’ve heard testimony by others who, years after speaking to anti-abortion advocates, admitted that the seeds we planted in their hearts eventually blossomed into an appreciation that the crazy Christians were right all along.

It’s impressive enough when this happens individual by individual. What would transpire if a major political party, with unlimited resources at its disposal and the ability to speak to multiple millions at once, was united in presenting a factual, morally consistent, unapologetic stance against baby-killing? Perhaps for a few years that party might lose elections in particularly pro-abortion districts. But eventually, after the other side had worn itself out trying to defend the defenseless, I believe the momentum would shift irreversibly towards truth.

This, however, would require some delayed gratification, and most pro-life politicians are focused on  now . They lack the foresight (or rather, do not care) that taking a hardline stance today will pay dividends tomorrow, and clear the path for greater and greater victories in the future. No, all that matters is  this  election (i.e. their election). And as we’ve been told time and time again, “If we don’t win this year, it’s all over!”

I suppose we should be glad Joe Biden and the Democrats have decided to make baby-killing so central to their campaigns. They’ll force Republicans to address the issue! Whether pro-life politicians react as they’ve usually done, or finally see beyond myopic self-interest, is the big question of 2024. If Jekyll doesn’t stop hiding from Hyde, Hyde will be the death of both of them.

RELATED: Trump, Vance must continue to be criticized for betraying truth on abortion, same-sex ‘marriage’

Jonathan Darnel is an anti-abortion activist incarcerated for participating in a 2020 rescue at a Washington, DC abortion mill. Jonathan’s activism site is GetSeriousChurch.com. To help incarcerated anti-abortion rescuers go to SmashTheFACE.life.

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