Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - The Full Audiobook

Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is, at its core, a story about a man who tries to cut his own soul in half. The central argument, laid out in the final chapter, is that human nature is not a single, unified self but a “thorough and primitive duality”—a war between good and evil. The novel’s horror comes from the discovery that you cannot separate the two without destroying the whole.

The Mystery and the Search

The story begins not with Jekyll, but with his lawyer, Mr. Utterson, a man of “rugged countenance” who is “austere with himself” yet tolerant of others. Utterson is drawn into a mystery when his kinsman, Mr. Enfield, tells him about a disturbing incident: a small, detestable man named Edward Hyde trampled a young girl in the street and paid off her family with a cheque signed by a respected man—Dr. Henry Jekyll. Utterson is troubled because Jekyll’s will contains a bizarre clause leaving everything to this same Edward Hyde in the event of Jekyll’s “disappearance or unexplained absence.”