Author’s note: While reading through the chapters “The Last Night” and “Dr. Lanyon’s narrative” my eyes were opened to the biblical motifs and illusions so I decided that I’d spend this writing response emphasizing the way these correlations add to the duality and evil of this novella.
Deserted. Seclusion. Isolation. What better words to describe the life of Jesus? While His feet walked the Earth, he was alone and rebuked. The motif of seclusion was repeated many times throughout this novella, I believe, because Hyde/Jekyll felt the same way. “They” tried to achieve the highest honor in man’s eyes yet they were left as the outcast just as Jesus was. Just as an outcast is separated from the world, so is Heaven and Hell. Stevenson talked about “communication separately” and a “spacious cellar.” This separation and space showed the lapse between good and evil; Heaven and Hell. Evil is just a distortion of good and biblically this is sin. That sin could be lying, blasphemy, lust, greed, pride, the list could go on forever but Stevenson stopped that list at distortion – lies and blasphemies. Jesus was accused of both and it was this that got Him killed; like the heart, soul, and mind of Hyde. Ultimately, the author used these biblical separations, although connections too, to emphasize the separation between good and evil and to for the illusion of how far Hyde was from good.
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