The Rudiments of Mystery and Suspense in the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Abstract

Robert Louis Stevenson, a Scottish writer of novels, best known for his famous childrens voyage stories Treasure Island and Kidnapped.Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a lesson in suspense. Stevenson creates one singular point of mystery that successfully sustains reader intrigue and anxiety across nine tightly written chapters. Stevenson uses many methods to achieve suspense, mystery and horror in the first two chapters of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde. He does this by using a clever sense of setting, vocabulary, surroundings and the manner his characters are described. Some of these are highlighted in the depiction of the house; Enfield's story; Henry Jekyll will and the meeting with Hyde. He makes it look like that Jekyll and Hyde are two different people and when the reader sees this he knows they are the same person and when Utterson looks at the case it makes it look like he does not know anything about the fact that they are the same person. Suspense that derives from character is an effective technique to employ in mystery writing. The main frame of the work can then shift from the provision of bread crumbs and diversions to a more engaging structure that allows the characters freedom to move within the narrative. We want to see Jekyll. We wish Lanyon hadnt died. We trust Utterson. What the characters actually do becomes suspenseful. And that is the essence of mystery.