Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Nov 15, 2025
- 3 min read
Have you ever wondered whether you carry a darker side within you, one so unsettling that you’re almost afraid of it? Or worse, that you don’t even realize it exists until it suddenly surfaces in the most unexpected moments? Have you ever been fascinated by the figure of the werewolf, symbol of a dormant animal instinct hiding beneath human skin? Man by day, beast under the full moon. The themes of evil, identity, and raw, unfiltered instinct, often overlapping, have always captivated us, and they’re not far from what Stevenson explores in his famous tale. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of those books that strikes not so much for its plot (by now widely known) but for its philosophical subtext. I challenge anyone to close this novel without sitting in silence for a moment, staring into space while existential questions buzz around in your mind.
The story goes like this. The well-renowned Dr. Jekyll, after an experiment gone terribly right (or wrong), develops a second identity — the malevolent Mr. Hyde, who roams London at night committing terrible acts. The final section of the book, in which Jekyll explains in detail how and why all of this happened, is an avalanche of reflections.
What is evil? Is it inherent to human nature, or does it come from something external? Are we truly free to choose, or are we predetermined by who we are? Does free will even exist, and if so, what is it? Is real freedom a wise restraint, or is it surrendering entirely to the wild pull of impulse? If I repress a part of myself, even the darkest part, can I really say I’m living fully? And once you’ve tasted the intoxication of excess, how easy is it to resist its dangerous seduction?
Archetypes that have shaped our literature for centuries intertwine through the pages of this short novel. The theme of double, the opposites that define and complete one another, identity, the forbidden threshold, the tree of knowledge, the human desire to bend nature and elevate oneself to the realm of gods only to fall even lower.
From Adam and Eve to Icarus and Faust, all the way to Frankenstein and now Dr. Jekyll, Western culture is crowded with men desperate to approach divinity by resembling it, only to become its opposite - modern Lucifers, still eerily relevant. Men forced to face the heavy consequences of reaching beyond their limits, confronting the most shameful part of themselves, the one we hide away, just like Hyde’s name suggests, locked in an attic to wither and decay in our place like the portrait of Dorian Gray, yet no less real.
How far can we push the boundaries of our humanity before becoming inhuman? And isn’t it true that even our Mr. Hyde is still, undeniably, a part of us?
Maybe evil slips from our control when, bound by our limited nature, we still insist on going beyond what we can grasp, underestimating the consequences of our blind craving for life and for a potential we cannot understand. So we bite the apple, fly too close to the sun, strike deals with the devil, stand before the mirror to meet our darker half…only to realize, too late, that we are not capable of holding its gaze.
Maybe, as Jonah Kagen sings, I need you like God needs the Devil.
