The Setting Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The setting is old London sometime in the nineteenth century where there were many urban houses being lived in with many neighbors and your main transportation was walking. This setting made an easy territory to the infamous Mr. Hyde. If it were not for the fact that everyone is a potential neighbor and everybody most likely knowing each other then Mr. Hyde would have gone on to do many more social crimes. Like when he knocked down that girl and ran right over her, he would have gotten away if the little girl's family would not have heard her screams and if Mr. Enfield was not walking back into the town at three in the morning. But even with all of the circumstances put onto Mr. Hyde he still does not care about the brutal actions he commits upon the people of London.

Mr. Enfield stated to Mr Utterson "I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o'clock of a black winter morning...there was literally nothing to see but lamps" (Stevenson 2). This is exactly what was meant before with the dark emptiness of the night where it was easy for criminals to lurk, like Mr. Hyde was. Yet even when Mr Hyde "trampled calmy over the child's body and left her screaming" was not enough to satisfy his aggressive and sinister behavior (Stevenson 2). Another strong peice of setting was the house of Dr. Jekyll where Mr. Hyde "whipped out a key, and went in" like he lived there and raised a little suspicion among some people living near him as well as Mr. Utterson (Stevenson 3).

The whole purpose of the setting in this story, or atleast this first part the story, is to create a sense of mystery and a little tension between some of the characters. Also this helped the introduction explain Mr. Hyde a little bit about his sinister self as well as start the tension with Hyde and Utterson. The setting is mostly set there like that to show all of the emotion and affect of it to the people and the reader. Without it, the story would have started out weak and might not have been as good of a book as it is now.

The setting is like a helper to create emotions and different tensions between the characters. If the setting were to be different or have no detail then there would basically be no story to tell. Basically if a story has a bland or no setting then there flare or anything to grab the reader's attention. If Mr. Hyde were still his evil self but in a different surrounding then the reader would get the wrong idea of him. The authors of all books use a strong setting to show th reader what they want them to feel as they read. Setting means a lot to a great story and without it it woul be nothing but a piece of paper with words on it.