Language & Imagery

Analysing Stevenson's use of language is essential for achieving top marks — AO2 (analysing language, form and structure with subject terminology) is worth 15 of the 40 marks on Edexcel Paper 2 Section A, alongside AO1 (15) and AO3 (10). This lesson examines the key language techniques and imagery patterns in Jekyll and Hyde.

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Animal Imagery

One of the most important imagery patterns in the novella is the animalistic language used to describe Hyde.

Key animal imagery quotes

Quote	Chapter	Analysis
"with ape-like fury" (4)	4	Directly links Hyde to primates — Darwinian regression
"like a monkey" (8)	8	Hyde's movements are animalistic, subhuman
"it cried out like a rat" (8)	8	Hyde reduced to vermin — the lowest form of animal
"hissing" (8)	8	Serpent imagery — connects to Satan and the Fall
"troglodytic" (2)	2	Literally "cave-dwelling" — a primitive, pre-civilised being
"hardly human ... something troglodytic" (2)	2	Hyde exists on the boundary between human and animal

What the animal imagery does

The animal imagery serves several functions:

1. Connects to Darwin and degeneration — Hyde is a regression to a more primitive state.
2. Dehumanises Hyde — making him seem less than human justifies the horror characters feel.
3. Reflects Victorian fears — if evolution is true, the "beast" is still inside us.
4. Charts a decline — from "ape" (primate) to "rat" (vermin) to "hissing" (serpent), Hyde becomes progressively less human.

Examiner's tip: When analysing animal imagery, always connect it to Victorian context. For example: "Stevenson's description of Hyde's 'ape-like fury' directly engages with post-Darwinian anxieties about degeneration — the fear that civilised man could regress to a bestial state. The adjective 'ape-like' positions Hyde as an atavistic throwback, embodying the primitive self that Victorian respectability sought to suppress."

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Gothic Atmosphere: Fog, Darkness, and the City

Stevenson creates a pervasive Gothic atmosphere through his descriptions of London.

Fog imagery

Fog is one of the novella's most powerful symbols:

"a great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven ... the fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city" (4)

Element	Symbolism
Fog	Obscures truth — mirrors the secrecy and concealment
"chocolate-coloured pall"	Death imagery ("pall" = funeral cloth) — the city is dying
"drowned city"	London is suffocating under its own fog / hypocrisy
Shifting visibility	Truth appears and disappears like the fog

Darkness and light

The novella operates on a darkness/light binary:

Light	Darkness
Respectability, reason, order	Evil, secrecy, the unconscious
Jekyll's front door (open, lit)	Hyde's door (dark, sinister by-street)
Daytime scenes (Chapter 3)	Night scenes (Chapters 1, 4, 8)
Lanyon's drawing room	Jekyll's locked laboratory

Hyde operates almost exclusively at night — he tramples the child at 3 a.m., murders Carew in the evening, and Poole describes hearing him prowling after dark.

Examiner's tip: The darkness is not just atmospheric — it is thematic. When Stevenson plunges a scene into darkness or fog, he is signalling that truth is being obscured and that the characters are entering morally dangerous territory.

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The Language of the Indescribable

One of Stevenson's most distinctive techniques is describing Hyde through what cannot be described:

Quote	Chapter	Technique
"something displeasing, something downright detestable" (1)	1	Repetition of "something" — vagueness
"I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why" (1)	1	Contradiction — strong feeling, no explanation
"gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation" (2)	2	Paradox — deformed yet not specifically so
"not all of these together could explain the ... disgust, loathing and fear" (2)	2	Accumulation of negatives
"He is not easy to describe" (1)	1	Direct statement of indescribability

Why is this effective?