Essay about Tension and Suspense in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

How effective is the setting in creating tension and suspense in Stevenson’s works? Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a novella about a scientist who experiments with the morals of good and evil. He then decides to try to separate these elements and difficulties arise with this. This novella concerns how one individual has conflicting emotions that are both good and evil. Dr Jekyll tries to make one-person ‘wholly’ good and another ‘wholly’ evil, but his experiments become quite dangerous. ‘The Body Snatcher’ is about two old friends, Fettes and Doctor Macfarlane, who studied under someone who was a famous, but unorthodox, anatomist. They would collect bodies for this person but they soon regret collecting one body. The confession of†¦show more content†¦Utterson goes to visit Dr.Jekyll, he meets Hyde, though he never sees his face as he talks with him. It is always dark so that the reader cannot get a description of his face, and the scenes are always in the middle of the night. Even where Dr Jekyll’s house is situated creates tension. The book mentions that it is in Soho; which at the time was the ‘seedier’ side of London. People can relate to this and the setting makes the novella sound realistic and that is why Stevenson creates tension and suspense, whereas if the setting was somewhere such as Mars it would not be true as people may have visited Soho and they may know the town quite well. If Stevenson wrote a book that was set on Mars, the reader would feel more safe when reading it because they know this is not really going to happen, and so Stevenson would not fulfil his task of creating tension in the reader. At one point in the story, Mr. Utterson is looking for Mr Hyde and the book mentions that he looks for him â€Å"at night under the face of the fogged city moon.† This creates tension because it suggests that people would not be out late at night and the â€Å"fogged city† is giving the reader a sense of insecurity as the word s seem dark and damp, and people that go out at that time of night were probably up to no good. Other ordinary, good people were too scared to go out so the reader expects MrShow MoreRelated How Stevenson Builds Suspense and Tension in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde1137 Words   |  5 PagesStevenson Builds Suspense and Tension in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde After thoroughly examining the question at hand. I have understood that I should comment on at least three episodes of the novel and clearly stress out how the writer built up the suspense and tension of the story. However I am going to look at techniques such as using shot quotations and not being to repetitive. 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