Hyde, Jekyll, and the history of Unicorns

Dr, Jekyll and Mr.Hyde focuses around the duality of man. Although this theme is not explicitly revealed in the early chapters. The letter from Mr.Jekyll leaves no doubt that this is indeed the driving force throughout the story. The story explains that Jekyll believes that every person is composed of an angel and a demon.Based on this theory, he creates a potion to remove the demonic, beastly side of himself. However, his potion, which he hoped would separate and purify each element, succeeds only in bringing the dark side into being—Hyde emerges, but he has no angelic counterpart. Once unleashed, Hyde slowly takes over, until Jekyll ceases to exist. This leads the reader to wonder if Stevenson's theory is that man is evil, and that only human culturing prevents the anarchy and chaos of the demon from being released.