Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

About the Author:

The author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 23, 1850. His childhood at Heriot Row inspired in later life many of the charming poems published in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885). His most popular works are Travels With a Donkey (1879), Treasure Island (1882), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Kidnapped (1887).

In search of better health, Stevenson and his family travelled to the Pacific in 1888 and settled in Samoa. Stevenson died on Dec. 3, 1894, when he was just 44 years old. He is buried there, on Mount Vaea.

The plot:

On a nice Sunday afternoon the lawyer Utterson and his friend Enfield are walking along a street while Enfield is telling Utterson the story of Mr Hyde who had hit a little girl because she crashed into him. Hyde has to pay this little girl money and the strange thing is that this bad man Hyde pays with a cheque of the nice Dr Jekyll who is well known for being such a good man.

After this walk, when Utterson is at home he takes the last will of his old friend Dr Jekyll and there he reads that he will give everything to Mr Hyde if he dies. Utterson decides to go to Dr Layon who is a friend of both and to ask him about Hyde. But Layon does not know Hyde either, and so Utterson goes to Hyde's house and there he waits for him. Hyde comes he speaks with Utterson and tells him that Dr Jekyll is his friend.

Some days later Dr Jekyll gives a party to which Utterson is invited, and after this party they have time to talk about Hyde. And the result is that Utterson has to promise to the Doctor that he will never change the will. After some time a little girl sees how Hyde kills an old, well known man. A police man and Utterson go to Hyde's house, but he is not there and so they break in and find the stick which Hyde used to kill the man.

Utterson tells this to Dr Jekyll this, who shows him a letter which laid in the post box. But this is not true because Poole (the man who works for him) has not seen this letter before. After this Utterson goes home and tells everything to his clerk. And while he is telling this story to the clerk he gets a little notice from the Doctor. They find out that this is in the same handwriting as is Hyde's letter. That means that Dr Jekyll has writte the letter for Hyde.

Hyde does not come for a long time and in this time Dr Jekyll is very happy and he, Dr Layon and Utterson become good friends. But one day when Utterson comes to Dr Jekyll he is not allowed to come in and so he goes to Dr Layon who is very ill and does not want to hear the name 'Jekyll' anymore. He tells Utterson that Dr Jekyll is also ill but that he cannot tell him what has happened.

And so Utterson writes Dr Jekyll a letter because he wants to know why he was not allowed to come to him and see him. The next day a letter from Dr Jekyll arrives, which says that Dr Jekyll does not want to blame Dr Layon and that he has shut himself in and does not want to see him again. Dr Layon dies the next day and on the same day Utterson gets a letter from him, but he is not allowed to open it before Dr Jekyll is dead. Utterson finds out, that a door of Hyde's house is the back door of Dr Jekyll's house.

One day Poole comes to Utterson and takes him to Dr Jekyll's house because he cannot tell him what he knows. When they enter the house all servants are listening to a voice they are hearing and everybody thinks that this is not Dr Jekyll. Poole thinks that Dr Jekyll has been murdered 8 days before, when they hear a loud scream. But they do not know who this other person is.

Utterson does not believe that it is another man because he thinks Dr Jekyll is ill and so has an altered voice. But Poole tells him that he has to go to town to bring some medicine for him, but nobody has this medicine. And this person is writing him little notices but once he sees this person and it looks like a wild animal and when this person sees him it runs back to the study.

After this story Utterson goes to the study and says something to this person and when he hears this voice he is sure that this is not Dr Jekyll and so they break into the study and then they see Hyde who lies on the ground and is dead. They search for Dr Jekyll but they cannot find him.They find an envelope for Utterson and in this envelope is Dr Jekyll's will and in it says that Utterson gets everything. There is also a letter with that day's date. It says that Dr Jekyll has gone away and that Utterson should read Dr Layon's letter.

There he learns that Dr Jekyll asked Dr Layon to come to him and to take his drawer, in which there were some powders, a bottle and a notebook, home with him. He also had to be at home at midnight because then there would come a man to pick up the drawer.

Dr Layon does so. He goes to Dr Jekyll's old building with Poole. They have to break into this room because the door is looked and it takes them two hours. Then Layon goes in alone and takes this drawer and goes home. He opens the powders, which are like salt. In the bottle there is some medicine to drink and there is also a notebook and an old gun.

At midnight a man comes who looks very strange. He wants to have these things and when he sees them he runs to them and takes a glass and puts some medicine from the bottle into this glass, then he takes a little bit of this salt and mixes it with the medicine. This drink looks very strange and when it is finished the man asks Layon if he is interested in this drink or if he might go. Layon is  interested and so the man drinks this thing and suddenly changes into Dr Jekyll. Dr Layon is sure that the man before has been Hyde.

Then Utterson reads Dr Jekyll's letter. He writes that he has found out that there are two men in him. One is very naughty and the other very nice. And so he has tried to find a drug to set the two men free. And when he was finished with this drug and had drunk it, he changed into Hyde and when he drank this again he was Dr Jekyll. And because of this he bought Hyde's house. He told his servants that Hyde was allowed to go in and out or stay in Dr Jekyll's house if he wanted to. Then he wrote his will.

First Hyde was like a naughty schoolboy but then he changed into evil. Dr Jekyll took the pen into the other hand and so it was Hyde's writing that said Hyde got everything.

Two days before Hyde murdered this old man he had drunk the drug and changed back to Dr Jekyll but he changed back while he was sleeping. So he went to his study and mixed the drink again and when he was Dr. Jekyll he did not want to change back to Hyde because he thought that Hyde was going to become the boss. But the next day he drank it again and then he murdered this man. Hyde burned every paper which had his name on it because he was so afraid of being found out. Then he drank this drug again and changed to Dr Jekyll who felt very sorry. The next day, when he heard the news, he was very glad that he was not Hyde anymore. But when he sat in the park and thought about bad things he changed immediately to Hyde. Now he could not get home because of the servants and so he went to a hotel and wrote to Dr Layon and to Poole. He told a servant to post it. At night he went out and drove through the streets of the city with a cab and when he got out of this cab he counted the minutes until midnight. When he changed into Dr. Jekyll and saw the fear in Layon's eyes he was not afraid of being caught by the police. He went home and the next morning everything was alright but he was much afraid because of this animal which was in him. After breakfast his body started to shake and he knew that he was going to change into Hyde so he ran into the room and then he was already Hyde. He had to take more of this drug but he changed into Hyde again and again and suddenly he had no drugs anymore and so he told Poole to bring some medicine from town but he did not get the right one and Dr Jekyll did not want to be Hyde forever. So he killed himself and with him Hyde.

My opinion:

The book itself is very famous. It has no deeper sense (as I can see), so I was not able to make a long interoperation, but I liked this book very much because it was very interesting to read. What I liked most was that I could not guess the ending and that I had to read it to the finish because I wanted to know what would happen next. This book is for everybody who likes good mystery stories.