The Theme of Deception in Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The story of Jekyll and Hyde from beginning to end has a vast mystery around it. The whole story is based on this mysteriousness leading straight away to crimes with no suspects in mind and a huge case ahead of them. The people in this story are scantily as they seem and seemingly always contain a sort of secrets and elusive nature. In the story the prominent theme is deception of Jekyll not revealing that he has slowly been take over by a inversely different personality who seems to do evil, while Jekyll is seemingly dying slowly. In this story the acts of deception while assuming that Jekyll is a completely different person apart from Hyde is seen through the actions Jekyll leaving the undeserving Hyde the heir to his will, the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, and the apparent suicide of Hyde.

Dr. Jekyll is a really respective man that has a great amount of credentials, and by the actions of him leaving his will to Hyde created suspicion around the whole ordeal. Hyde was inversely opposite to Jekyll and has all the credentials of wrong doing on his side. A piece of evidence that strongly shows the townspeople's disbelief is, “The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson. though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it…”. In this quote even the closest friends, Jekyll and Utterson, did not see eye to eye on the subject matter of Mr. Hyde gaining all of Jekyll’s resources or even business in the case of his death of disappearance. The real problem behind the respectable Jekyll giving all of his assets and other belongings to the evil Mr. Hyde is that all the other friends are jealous and cannot see the real reason behind this action which leads back to showing the deception in this action. Another deceptive factor in this novella that ties in similarly to this deception of Sir Danvers Carew.

The murder of Sir Danvers Carew was taught to be done by a man claimed to be vicious and daring, due to Sir Danvers respectable position in parliament. The most valued suspect was Hyde who had a history of devious and daring crimes. The least noted suspect was Jekyll who was not suspected to have taken part in this action. Little to the knowledge of the citizens and detectives in London the two are in the same mind of Jekyll. Hyde is just an alternate personality that resumes controls of Jekyll’s body to do horrendous crimes and always be uncultured under the identity of the highly looked upon Dr. Jekyll.

All the evidence pointed to Hyde even though the cane was Jekyll’s they still fell to the deception and assumed that Hyde had stolen the cane which was used to bludgeon Sir Denver Carew to death. Even though Jekyll and Hyde are in the same body, the witness to the crime describes in this quote, the characteristics of Hyde that are drastically different from Jekyll’s. “Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the maid calls him”. In this quote despite the same body usage of Jekyll’s second personality of Hyde, the witness still managed to see what she assumed it was committing the crime, which morphed her reality to thinking that it was a different person than Jekyll, clearing him of all suspicion even through the involvement of his cane. Another instance where Hyde was able to conceal Jekyll from all guiltiness was his suicide.

Jekyll’s apparent letter concerning the outcome of Hyde’s faith was a hidden saving of Jekyll’s dignity and it hides his involvement with his other personality of Hyde. The reason for the Hyde part of Jekyll coming out and writing the note in the point of view of Jekyll was to create a diversion during the whole deception was to fake Jekyll’s escape and also show the death of Hyde to put all the open cases away. Doing this theoretically left Jekyll free and gone from sight with all his dignity and innocence attached. In this quote you can see the deception in place with the suicide being helpful in freeing Jekyll’s name, “I would say nothing of this paper. If your master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit.” This quote simply describes that they do not mind what happened to Jekyll because of his precious sickened state. They wish he well if he has escaped but, they also wish his soul freed if he has died, they are just happy to have their friends name cleared and not have him a suspect in this case. The deception won over everyone and played a mirage over what was actually happening.

In this story the acts of deception while assuming that Jekyll is a completely different person apart from Hyde is seen through the actions Jekyll leaving the undeserving Hyde the heir to his will, the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, and the apparent suicide of Hyde. This story’s deception really won over everyone and helped to free and innocent many of a dangerous personality while not becoming guilty of any of its action. Deception really took a main theme in this story because of how much significance it had on the main plot and on the main chart per of this story. This story using this deception as a whole theme, to create a massive elusiveness and mysterious nature to this novella to add more suspense and unexpected moments. All these situations portrayed show the deception and how it was used in the advantage of saving Dr. Jekyll’s innocence and finally destroying of his evil personality of Mr. Hyde.