Unit Test

Which passage from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the most characteristic of gothic literature?

"There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable."

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. "I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. No sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask." Which theme is introduced in this exposition?

Curiosity leads to dark truths.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. "You know I never approved of it," pursued Utterson, ruthlessly disregarding the fresh topic. "My will? Yes, certainly, I know that," said the doctor, a trifle sharply. "You have told me so." "Well, I tell you so again," continued the lawyer. "I have been learning something of young Hyde." The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and there came a blackness about his eyes. "I do not care to hear more," said he. "This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop." "What I heard was abominable," said Utterson. "It can make no change. You do not understand my position," returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner. Which is the most accurate summary of the excerpt?

Dr. Jekyll is annoyed that he has to answer questions about his will.

Which line from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde best characterizes Dr. Jekyll as ill?

He did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade him welcome in a changed voice.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. "Why, then," said the lawyer, good-naturedly, "the best thing we can do is to stay down here and speak with you from where we are." "That is just what I was about to venture to propose," returned the doctor with a smile. But the words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below. They saw it but for a glimpse for the window was instantly thrust down; but that glimpse had been sufficient, and they turned and left the court without a word. This excerpt connects to the theme "Evil can never truly hide itself" because it shows how

Hyde continuously plagues Jekyll.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The butler was awaiting my arrival; he had received by the same post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith and a carpenter. The tradesmen came while we were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old Dr. Denman's surgical theatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll's private cabinet is most conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the lock excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the locksmith was near despair. But this last was a handy fellow, and after two hour's work, the door stood open. How does the complication affect the story?

It delivers exposition.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit. To summarize this excerpt correctly, what is the main event the reader should include?

Jekyll had a hard time choosing between being Jekyll and Hyde.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But time began at last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught. The excerpt confirms the prediction that

Jekyll will not be able to permanently resist becoming Hyde.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and night; and I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I can not, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. Which theme is most implied by the excerpt?

Lies are often preferable to harsh truths.

Suki is writing an essay comparing another gothic text to this excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Poole. "By the bye," said he, "there was a letter handed in to-day: what was the messenger like?" But Poole was positive nothing had come except by post; "and only circulars by that," he added. If her other gothic text contains the same gothic literature elements that appear in this excerpt, what should she focus on to draw a comparison?

a mysterious event

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night—ay, even if you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless your carriage should be actually at the door; and with this letter in your hand for consultation, to drive straight to my house. Poole, my butler, has his orders; you will find him waiting your arrival with a locksmith. The door of my cabinet is then to be forced: and you are to go in alone; to open the glazed press (letter E) on the left hand, breaking the lock if it be shut; and to draw out, with all its contents as they stand, the fourth drawer from the top or (which is the same thing) the third from the bottom. The excerpt contains an example of a gothic setting because it has

a mysterious old house at night.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. "My dear Utterson,—When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration to foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and first read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of "Your unworthy and unhappy friend, "HENRY JEKYLL." Since the letter adds suspense and moves the story forward, the letter can be viewed as

a plot device.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Poole disinterred the axe from under a stack of packing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest table to light them to the attack; and they drew near with bated breath to where that patient foot was still going up and down, up and down, in the quiet of the night. "Jekyll," cried Utterson, with a loud voice, "I demand to see you." He paused a moment, but there came no reply. "I give you fair warning, our suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you," he resumed; "if not by fair means, then by foul—if not of your consent, then by brute force!" In the excerpt, Poole and Utterson are comparable characters in that they are both -.

brave

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was insane; but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound to do as he requested. In the excerpt, Dr. Lanyon's conflict is an internal conflict because it is

character vs. self.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It was late in the afternoon, when Mr. Utterson found his way to Dr. Jekyll's door, where he was at once admitted by Poole, and carried down by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden, to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or dissecting rooms. This excerpt is part of the plot's

climax

Read the excerpt from Alex's essay on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The theme "Secrets isolate people from those around them" is repeated throughout the story. Dr. Jekyll isolates himself for mysterious reasons. Then, Dr. Lanyon isolates himself because of something that happened between him and Dr. Jekyll that he won't talk about. In his essay, Alex is analyzing the

development of a theme.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. The characteristic of gothic literature that is most displayed in the excerpt is

horror

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer; broken and battered as it was, he recognized it for one that he had himself presented many years before to Henry Jekyll. Mr. Utterson's worried thoughts about the connection between Hyde and Jekyll is an example of which kind of conflict?

internal

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. This sentence is part of the exposition because it

introduces a character.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, might, by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change. The excerpt is a good example of suspense because it

makes the reader excited about what will happen next.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. Now read the excerpt from Darcy's essay on Dr. Jekyll. In the story, Dr. Jekyll repeatedly talks about having only two choices. Yet I know from my own experience that there are usually many options to choose from when dealing with human behavior—not just good or evil. This leads me to conclude that Dr. Jekyll had a strict, uncompromising, black-and-white view of the world that didn't leave room for half measures and shades of gray. In this excerpt, Darcy is

making an inference.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. The mood of this excerpt can best be described as

ominous

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. "Sir," he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, "Was that my master's voice?" "It seems much changed," replied the lawyer, very pale, but giving look for look. "Changed? Well, yes, I think so," said the butler. "Have I been twenty years in this man's house, to be deceived about his voice? No, sir; master's made away with; he was made away with eight days ago, when we heard him cry out upon the name of God; and who's in there instead of him, and why it stays there, is a thing that cries to Heaven, Mr. Utterson!" "This is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a wild tale my man," said Mr. Utterson, biting his finger. One advantage to having this excerpt told from a limited third-person point of view is that the reader

only knows what Utterson and Poole know, which builds suspense.

Read the excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and there came a blackness about his eyes. "I do not care to hear more," said he. "This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop." "What I heard was abominable," said Utterson. "It can make no change. You do not understand my position," returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner. "I am painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange—a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking." The direct characterization of Dr. Jekyll implies that he is

upset by Utterson's persistence.

Read the three excerpts from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For all that, the two men put the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted. *** Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence and obviously under a weight of consideration. "You are sure he used a key?" he inquired at last. *** That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. As Mr. Utterson's character develops, he becomes more

worried