Jekyll quotes

“Both sides of me were in dead earnest”

Duality is inherently part of Jekyll’s identity.

“Man is not truly one but truly two”

Jekyll risks death to test whether the human psyche can be split. Syntactic parallelism emphasises that humans cannot be purely good or evil.

“He was no less distinguished for religion”

Shows Jekyll’s respectable public image and social conformity.

“The book was annotated with startling blasphemies”

Suggests Jekyll secretly rejects religious morality and hides corruption beneath respectability.

“I concealed my pleasures”

Jekyll represses his sinful desires to maintain Victorian social expectations.

“I felt younger, lighter, happier in body”

The tricolon reflects Jekyll’s joy and freedom when released from societal restraints.

“My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring”

The metaphor and religious allusion present Hyde as Jekyll’s repressed sinful desires unleashed. “Roaring” suggests animalistic violence and lack of control.

“Drug that shook the very fortress of identity”

The drug destabilises Jekyll’s sense of self and destroys rigid social expectations.

“I compounded the elements”

The semantic field of chemistry reflects dangerous scientific experimentation.

“Late one accursed night”

The motif of darkness links science with sin and moral corruption.

“Noble spirit”

Highlights the moral expectations that Jekyll fails to uphold through his experiments.

“Empire of generous or pious aspirations”

Suggests Jekyll once aimed for moral goodness before being corrupted by ambition and desire.

“The hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy”

The hand symbolises respectability being overtaken by Hyde’s primitive and uncontrolled desires.

“Death and birth”

The inverse iconic word order reflects Jekyll’s unnatural attempt to separate morality from immorality.

“If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also”

Sin brings both pleasure and punishment, making the novella a cautionary tale.

“This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop”

Jekyll’s urgency reveals his desperation to keep his secrets hidden.