When
I was eight years old my mother, upon my insistence, took me one evening to see
the movie “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” starring Spencer Tracy in the dual
role. Other kids had spoken of it as the
latest horror flick not to be missed. It
scared the stuffings out of me and gave me nightmares as well as day-mares for
at least a week afterward. It was hard
for me to be alone in our apartment. I
imagined that I saw Hyde standing in every doorway, glowering at me with murder
on his mind. Naturally I did not let any
of my friends know about my internal emotional reaction to having seen it. I did not want to be considered a
scaredy-cat. (I believe that was the
slang term in vogue among youth at the time.)
I do not recall that I discussed it with anybody, not even my
parents.
Another
fifteen years would pass before I would ever see it again – at a theater in my
college town. By then I was
intellectually distanced enough that I could understand what Jekyll in his
experiments was up to, what he was trying to prove. That time, no nightmares, just a studied
approach to the projected drama of human transformation, however strange it
might still have seemed! When I was
eight I entered into the fantasy of it, the same way I later learned to get
excited and shudder as I watched Frankenstein pictures. It was all a game of make believe, and I knew
it. My cousin and I loved to play the
roles of the monster, the Wolf man and Dracula.
We would switch parts and pulled other playmates into playing with us. But in college I was ready to consider
“Jekyll / Hyde” a subject for academic study.
I became aware that a famous author, Robert Louis Stevenson, was behind
the creation of the tale, the same one who thrilled us with the adventures in
“Treasure Island.” And over the years as
a student of theology I began to ask what this children’s author was up to in
writing a book that would terrify the most impressionable of kids, namely
me.
In
case anyone reading this is uninformed as to the nature and content of the
original book, let me lay it out briefly.
Jekyll is a London physician who devotes himself to research and
experiments regarding the brain and how it might be influenced to separate the
good side of an individual from the evil or dark side. He decides to use himself as a guinea pig to
test the effectiveness of a drug compound in pursuit of a cure for moral
imbalance. He assumes that the good side of him, released from the evil side,
can go on to better fulfill its creative destiny. His experiment is successful. Too successful! After much writhing and wrestling with the
pain the drug causes, Edward Hyde, this corrupt alter ego that has been dormant
in his psyche for all his previous life, is born. Jekyll’s transformation into Hyde is physical
in form as well as mental. He comes out
shorter in height and more gruff and unsavory and violently antisocial in
appearance, not recognizable as the man everyone knows. The doctor is pleased at first that he can
change back to his respectable self at any time, a practice that he thinks will
keep Hyde under control.
By
night Hyde becomes a prowler and a molester; by day Jekyll is the loving and
caring doctor. But somewhere along the
way Jekyll gets hooked on the habit.
Hyde makes an ignominious name for himself and slowly takes possession
of Jekyll. Eventually he is able to put
in an appearance without the drug. The
outcome of this calamity is tragic. A
crucial turning point in the story is the murder of a member of Parliament,
with Hyde identified publicly as the murderer. Jekyll knows at this juncture that he must
keep his nemesis hidden, and after futile attempts to perfect the drug and
restore order to his life and person, both monster and monster maker meet their
odious and disreputable death.
It
does not take much brain power to imagine how Stevenson’s contemporaries in the
1880s responded to his writing. What a
shaggy dog tale! What an absurd scroll
of circumstances! What a spook show! I am sure some pious folk considered it
obscene or blasphemous or heathenish.
After all, the soul is God’s domain; no medical scientist has the right
to try to muck around in it! Whoever
heard of a drug that can alter human personality? Whoever heard of multiple personality or
fracturing in any form? Whoever heard of
evil as an issue of the nervous system or related in any way to it? Is not evil the work of the devil in the
heart? Whoever heard of the notion that
the body’s chemistry can be an agent in the manifestation of evil? Whoever
heard of the facets of the brain having anything to do with moral
choice? Whoever heard of the idea that
good and evil uneasily coexist as factors in the human mind or that there is
evil in the most righteous of us? How
much agony of mind and heart Stevenson had to go through being so far ahead of
his time and braving these assaults I cannot say. Probably on the order of what Darwin
endured. The two men, after all, were
contemporaries.
As
far back in my adult life as I can remember, I have been fascinated with this
gripping narrative. The many
dramatizations of it on screen that have come about had a lot to do with
that. In fact, the release of the
Spencer Tracy version did not mark the first time Stevenson’s tale had been
brought to the screen. John Barrymore
portrayed the tragic doctor in a silent movie treatment. Frederic March took a hand at him in a 1932
version, which won him an Oscar – just nine years before the Tracy one that
sent me into those fearful jitters.
There was at least one live TV rendition in the 1950s and Kirk Douglas
at a later point stirred up a squall in a TV musical derived from the
fable. My latest stimulus is a new book
by a first time author named Daniel Irvine entitled “Hyde,” in which he tells
an expanded version strictly from the view point of the monstrous alter ego. In fact, Hyde narrates it all in the first
person.
Jekyll’s
motivation in following his doomed course of action in his secret lab has
previously been assumed to be plain curiosity.
He just wants to find out if he can bring about the desired result and
pokes around like any scientist until he strikes pay dirt. But Irvine has broadened the basis of
motivation by ascribing to the doctor a torturous childhood, under the
domination of an abusing father who forced him to debauch himself and robbed
him of his sense of manhood by all kinds of unspeakable means. This Jekyll strives for a disassembling of
his persona as a means of cleansing himself of his alleged taint. He wants a companionable version of himself
from whom he can learn and whose heart and mind he can inhabit. He begins his experiment not knowing what he
will bring forth but hoping for a renewed self. A process of cleansing and redemption!
He
is dismayed and undone by the emergence instead of a truly corrupt alter ego in
Hyde, whom he sees is more evil and unconscionable than he himself has ever
been. And, as I have indicated, he finds
Hyde impossible to suppress. Jekyll even
begins to enjoy being Hyde on his secret forages in the dark of the city. To keep Hyde under a measure of control he
pretends to his household and friends that Hyde is a protégé entitled to come
and go in his house as he pleases, while he secretly purchases another property
for Hyde’s own personal and forbidden use.
There
are points in this new novel when I was made to feel some sympathy for this
ugly furtive character. He believes
Jekyll has brought him out of dormancy and given him all this freedom for a
purpose but has difficulty at first figuring out what the doctor expects of
him. What emerges is the realization
that Jekyll relies on him to do the evil that Jekyll himself does not have the
nerve to do. Hence the murder of the
member of Parliament by whom Jekyll feels threatened with exposure! And, of course, Hyde becomes painfully aware
that his survival depends upon Jekyll’s, they being inseparable.
Actually,
the publishers of “Hyde” have included Stevenson’s original fictional work,
entitled “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” at the rear of the
binding. It is a very short work, less
than a hundred pages in length, and sticking it there poses no problem
whatsoever. It gives the reader a chance
to see how Irvine’s writing has emerged from Stevenson’s and to catch up on the
evolution of the saga.
Let
me make it clear that, brilliantly written as “Hyde” is, I do not recommend it for
the general reading public, only for those as fascinated with it as I am and
for those who still thrill to a juicy Gothic mystery. My purpose here is simply to remind us all
that we are more than what we appear to be on the surface. The human psyche is rigged and we have a long
way yet to plow to understanding adequately the nature of life’s dark, shadowy
side, in which so many individuals on this planet get trapped. Some are snared before they are even old enough
to grasp what is happening to them.
In
a time in our world’s history when senseless killings are taking place – on the
order of Va. Tech’s sniper and the insane young man who tried to take the life
of the Congresswoman a few years back in Arizona – notable authorities on the
subject of insanity and brain chemistry are varied in their explanations of
cause. The rigorous search for
scientific answers to the problem of bald evil goes on, as we wait for further
disclosures. In the meantime, we all
grope for ways to subdue our own demons.
We experience thoughts and impulses that we would not want to admit to
our friends that we house. We deal with
internal foes that are sometimes monstrous and threatening, however respectable
our outward reputations might be or our otherwise good intentions. We are many shades rolled into one. We are not one dimensional; we are
multi-dimensional, and keeping our multi-dimensionality in harness is not a
simple matter.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn
about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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