Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - Book Report/Review Example

“It was by this time about nine in the morning and the first fog of the season1. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr Utterson beheld a marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of the evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft
Of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths3.The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare4. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law’s officers, which may at times assail the most honest5.

” The narrator, in the first part, is describing Mr. Utterson’s drive in a cab heading to Soho. The second part of the excerpt describes Mr. Utterson as he is now going back home from Soho. He is conscious of the long arm of the law and its severity even on innocent men. The passage, though short, bears a critical meaning to anyone reading it. The use of language as well as the intricacies of the sentences reveals a lot about what the narrator intends the audience to realize. In the first instance, the author starts with a short sentence and then follows up with a long sentence that gives a description.

We can tell that the narrator is explicitly breaking down the thoughts of the lawyer, Mr. Utterson as he leaves for work in the morning via a cab. We can also tell that the weather is quite bad, from the language the narrator uses. For instance, “the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours”, shows that in addition to the fog, the wind is also blowing in an unforgiving manner. In the second part of the excerpt, the narrator is describing Mr. Utterson’s ride back to his quarters.

We can gather that Soho is an area of low stead, a slum from the description “the dismal quarter of Soho”. The narrator also makes it explicitly clear that Soho is a very busy place with hardworking people when he says, “…its lamps, which had never been extinguished”.