#/pos i love . gothic literature . loss of control and mad science are such sexy horror topics | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ahalliance · 2 years ago

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that final chapter of jekyll and hyde is sooo fascinating bc a lot of that letter is so ambiguous speaker-wise. a good chunk of it is by the person who considers himself jekyll, as he is the one who signs the letter off and drives most of the written account, but it dips into identification with Hyde on a first person singular basis not a negligible amount of times. but most of it seems to be written by some unknown speaker, someone who, intentionally or not, considers themselves to be neither Jekyll or Hyde; there’s something quite chilling about reading an account by a person you initially assume is Jekyll, someone whose story you’ve been following since the beginning at this point, only for them to start referring to “Henry Jekyll” and Hyde in the third person . i know the whole novella is themed around the ambiguity of Jekyll and Hyde as separate people but christ, man

#jay rambles #/pos i love . gothic literature . loss of control and mad science are such sexy horror topics #so many ways to interpret those ambiguous pronoun shifts #bc like . a lot of that chapter still feels like it’s mainly jekyll . or the part of him that considers himself to be jekyll at least #what makes it interesting though is how those pronouns shift around. bc it’s not deliberate on ‘jekyll’s’ part. bro literally says he cannot #say ‘I’ when referring to Hyde’s deeds. so it makes it much more poignant when he ends up doing just that anyway. bc it’s not smth ‘jekyll’#wants to do. so it’s just a natural part of the person writing that letter #jeykll drank his magic science juice and triggered some HEAVY fucking dissociation #^ that final chapter is just . fragments of a personality that is maybe mostly jekyll kinda sorta? flowing and receding one over the other #like waves on a beach

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