Question

Using the excerpt below from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, make at least one inference about the struggles that Dr. Jekyll goes through in his final days. Make sure to support your inference with evidence from the text.

[Jekyll then describes that eventually the regular amount of potion quit transforming him from Hyde back into Jekyll and that he had to double or even triple his dosage to achieve the transformation. Eventually he starts changing from Jekyll to Hyde with no potion at all!]

... I sat in the sun on a bench ... a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been safe of all men’s respect, wealthy, beloved – the cloth laying for me in the dining room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.

... In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory shudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened.

... I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak in both [body] and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.

[Jekyll describes what happens when he becomes Hyde in his final days.] He [Hyde] loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father....

[Jekyll describes how the first batch of salt he had been using in his potions was running out, and any fresh supplies of salt he tried to use to make new potions did not produce any transformative effects. He believes the “unknown purity” in the original batch of salt was the ingredient that helped him turn back and forth from Jekyll to Hyde. When this original batch of salt runs out, he will have to remain Hyde forever.]

This, then, is the last time, short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass ... And indeed the doom that is closing in on us both, has already changed and crushed him [Hyde].

... This is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up the confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.

Answer 1

Check below for the answers and explanations

Step-by-step explanation:

In Dr. Jekyll's final days, he is struggling to let go of the wicked, evil and deadly life he has chosen to live. He wants to see the end of Mr. Hyde, the second personality he has voluntarily chosen to be, but he cannot easily do this because he now enjoys the satisfaction he gets from the villainy he constantly displays as Mr. Hyde. "... I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak in both [body] and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self."

Dr. Jekyll resorts to killing himself as a means of ending this evil and wicked life, but again killing oneself is a wicked act and can be seen as an action he has taken as Mr. Hyde and not Dr. Jekyll. The innocent, fearful and God-fearing Dr.Jekyll would never resort to killing himself. "...This is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up the confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end."