Jekyll and Hyde Mind Map (GCSE)

Utterson and his cousin Enfield pass a sinister door. Enfield describes seeing Hyde trample a young girl, then pay compensation with a cheque signed by a respectable man.

Utterson is troubled by Jekyll's will, which leaves everything to Hyde. He meets Hyde and is disgusted by him. Dr Lanyon has fallen out with Jekyll over his "unscientific" ideas.

A maid sees Hyde beat Sir Danvers Carew, a respected MP, to death with a cane. Hyde disappears.

Jekyll shows Utterson a letter supposedly from Hyde, but Utterson's clerk notices the handwriting matches Jekyll's. Lanyon dies after a terrible shock, and Utterson and Enfield see Jekyll at a window, his face frozen in terror.

The butler Poole fetches Utterson. They break into Jekyll's laboratory and find Hyde dead, but no sign of Jekyll.

Lanyon's letter reveals he watched Hyde drink a potion and turn into Jekyll. Jekyll's full statement explains that he made the potion to separate the good and evil sides of himself, but lost control, began to change into Hyde without it, and ran out of the ingredient he needed.

A respected doctor and scientist who hides his darker desires and creates Hyde to indulge them. He loses control as Hyde grows stronger and his better self weakens.

Jekyll's evil side: small, violent and repulsive. People feel instant disgust when they see him but cannot say why. His brutal acts reveal the violence hidden beneath respectable society.

A rational, loyal lawyer whose step-by-step, detective-like investigation drives the story. Most of the novella follows him.

A traditional scientist and Jekyll's old friend, who rejects Jekyll's experiments and is destroyed by the shock of what he sees.

Jekyll's loyal butler, who raises the alarm on the last night.

Utterson's cousin, who first tells the story of Hyde and the door.

Everyone has a good side and an evil side. Jekyll states it directly: "man is not truly one, but truly two".

Jekyll's attempt to separate good from evil ends with evil taking over completely.

Jekyll's experiments overreach, as if he is playing God. Stevenson questions what science should be allowed to do.

Victorian gentlemen protect their reputations and avoid scandal, even at the cost of the truth. Utterson's loyalty to Jekyll keeps the secret hidden.

Strict Victorian morals force people to hide their desires. When they break out, as Hyde, they erupt as violence, suggesting hypocrisy in polite society.

Enfield, Story of the Door. Mechanical, destructive imagery for Hyde trampling the girl: he is unstoppable and inhuman.

Utterson, Search for Mr Hyde: "If he be Mr. Hyde, I shall be Mr. Seek." His determination to uncover the mystery, and the novella's detective structure.

Utterson, Search for Mr Hyde. Religious imagery presents Hyde as devilish. In the same chapter he is described as "pale and dwarfish".

The narrator, The Carew Murder Case. Animal imagery presents Hyde as primitive and less than human, echoing Victorian fears raised by Darwin.

Jekyll, Full Statement. The clearest statement of the novella's central idea: the duality of human nature.

Jekyll, Full Statement: "I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self". Evil gradually takes over.

Reputation mattered enormously, and gentlemen were expected to hide anything shameful. Public respectability could cover private vice, as in Jekyll's double life.

On the Origin of Species (1859) raised fears that humans were close to animals and could slide backwards into savagery, which Hyde seems to embody.

Wealthy streets lay right beside poverty and crime, much like Jekyll's respectable house backing onto Hyde's sinister door.

An Edinburgh craftsman who was respectable by day and a burglar by night, a story Stevenson knew well.

The novella uses Gothic features such as mystery, darkness, fear and the hint of the supernatural.

The story is pieced together from Utterson's view, Lanyon's letter and Jekyll's statement. The letters and documents give it the feel of a case being solved.

The truth is withheld until the last two chapters, so readers investigate alongside Utterson and the suspense keeps building.

Fog, darkness and empty night-time streets create fear and hide what is really happening.

No one can say exactly what is wrong with him, so readers' imaginations make him more frightening than any description could.

Jekyll's grand front door and Hyde's shabby back door belong to the same building, like the two sides of one man.