Message

There is no simple message behind Robert Louise Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. However, Stevenson touches on a number of important issues in the story which could be interpreted to find a moral. 

The novella could be read as an allegory about addiction. Stevenson’s message might therefore be about the dangers of addiction and of becoming dependent on a drug, on a feeling, or on alcohol. Dr Jekyll’s addiction to the drug and to the freedom he experiences when he becomes Mr Hyde has terrible consequences, resulting in the murder of an innocent man and eventually in his own destruction. 

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde could also contain a message about the duality of human nature. As Dr Jekyll puts it, “all human beings […] are c...