ul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan”(101). Lanyon is at first reluctant, but his curiosity had gotten the best of him. As soon as Hyde drank the potion, he let out a cry, “he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table, and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth…. He seemed to swell- his face became suddenly black and the features seem to melt and alter” (101). Lanyon was absolutely astonished when he finally figured out that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person, he was absolutely speechless. Lanyon cannot tolerate the idea that man has an evil persona, and yet he has just been exposed to the proof that man does in fact possess an actual evil persona, which can be isolated from his dual-natured self. The actual discovery that Jekyll and Hyde are one person itself does not scare Lanyon, but the realization that an evil side found in everyone has stunned him. The worst he fears is that he himself, known as being a prominent, well respected doctor, has an evil side that is able to emerge and destroy his image. This realization has led him to intense anxiety and made him very sick. This, in the end, caused his death. The symbolism in this novel is spectacular and has made the story even more ironic. Stevenson had also intended for the names of the main characters to be a literary pun. Je, in French, means I, and Kyll sounds like kill, making Jekyll’s name mean I Kill. Dr. Jekyll was obsessed with killing and isolating the evil portion of himself. Hyde sounds like the word hide, meaning the vulgar flesh, or corpse of an organism that leaves a horrible stench. Also, Mr. Hyde was always trying to hide, and Dr. Jekyll was always trying to hide his evil inner-self, the hyde in him. When one of the narrators of the story, Mr. Utterson, a lawyer, come...
