Elaine Is Reading: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde > Chapter 2 – Part 1

[00:00:00] Foreign you’re listening to. Elaine is reading the strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, episode three, chapter two, part one. In this episode I’m discussing Search for Mr. Hyde, chapter two. In the book, Utterson is absolutely nosy as fuck, but honestly, he’s truly a quality friend and an amazing character. Why is he never in any adaptations still on the side of Hyde? All Hyde does is trigger miserable people. Let’s be honest, he’s giving Dwarf and little else. People are simply mad at themselves.

[00:00:48] Hey everyone. Welcome back to Elena’s reading. I’m just gonna make these things, like, so simple. Elaine is watching. Lane is reading.

[00:00:59] I am going to be talking about chapter two of the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

[00:01:07] Chapter two is.

[00:01:12] I have a lot to say about this.

[00:01:15] I had a lot to say about the first nine pages.

[00:01:18] This chapter is maybe, maybe 11. Maybe 11 pages. I didn’t count exactly. But the chapters are about like similar lengths except for the very last one.

[00:01:31] This.

[00:01:33] There’s a lot happening in here.

[00:01:35] First of all though, let me just thank everybody who took an interest in this series. I really appreciate it. I know, like, time is incredibly valuable for everybody and it’s just cool if anyone is taking any time out of their very busy day, busy schedule to listen to stuff or watch things.

[00:01:57] I know it’s. It’s rough on a lot of people. So thank you for taking an interest.

[00:02:01] I’ll try to make these consumable in a decent amount of time. I. I tend to ramble, but I think my rambling is kind of a good quality because weird stuff tends to come out of it. But I, I realize like an hour plus is.

[00:02:21] Is a bit.

[00:02:22] So if I think it needs to be cut, I’ll consider cutting it. But maybe I’ll just make things into like two parts so that they’re, you know, each part is shorter.

[00:02:36] I’ll think about it. I’ll see how it goes or how it comes out and what the length is. So thank you in advance and thanks for continuing to take an interest in what I’m reading and what I’m watching.

[00:02:50] That said, let’s get into chapter two of this amazing book.

[00:02:58] So chapter two is called the Search for Mr. Hyde. And we are picking up after the opening where Utterson and Enfield have just finished gossiping their pants off the in the park about this door. And we get our first introduction to who Mr. Hyde is again. We still don’t know the name of Jekyll, Henry Jekyll at all. He has not been mentioned yet in the story. We get his first mention here in chapter two.

[00:03:33] I like chapter two because it really begins to establish Utterson as somebody that I just kind of adore. And at the same time, he’s also just bonkers. I mean, this guy is ultimately, I think if anyone is going to make a version of Jekyll and Hyde that’s accurate, it needs to be about two gossipy men and one very gossipy man who is just so in everybody’s business and so adorable about it that, you know, he’s.

[00:04:14] He’s like, he needs to be played by somebody kind of.

[00:04:17] I think he’s a little older in the. In the book, but I would love to see kind of a younger version of Utterson, you know, maybe with a little swish and a little sass and just in everybody’s business, because that’s kind of how I picture him.

[00:04:35] After he goes home from the park, after meeting with Enfield and being really intrigued about why Hyde has a key to this door where his friend lives.

[00:04:45] He just gets downright obsessed.

[00:04:51] Let’s just call it what it is. He’s totally obsessed. I mean, he is so far up in this guy’s business and Hyde’s business and Jekyll’s business.

[00:05:00] And I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense to me. He’s a lawyer, so. And he’s not a bad lawyer. He’s not, like, he doesn’t come across as a shady lawyer, but, like, as a lawyer, as someone who, you know, is responsible for paying attention to his client’s business and kind of really be, you know, paying attention to detail and knowing where things might be a little shady or might be a little off.

[00:05:27] I would understand that he has a.

[00:05:30] A natural kind of curiosity about things, and that kind of makes him kind of go dive into stuff. I get all that, but this gets a little crazy. I mean, let’s.

[00:05:42] Let’s examine this.

[00:05:44] So he goes home, and the first thing he does, instead of going reading a book and going to bed, he goes into his safe and he pulls out this document. And it’s Dr. Jekyll’s will. And it’s literally the first time you hear his name, it just says, he pulls. He opens his safe, took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll’s will, and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents.

[00:06:15] And we get this impression that he did not approve of this will. Okay?

[00:06:26] He said he.

[00:06:29] He took charge of it now that it was made but had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it.

[00:06:38] He did not want to be involved in the drawing up of this will. He holds it because he’s Dr. Jekyll’s lawyer, but he’s this, like, no, this is no, just no.

[00:06:50] He does not approve.

[00:06:52] So we also get some information. It says Henry Jekyll.

[00:06:57] I’ll just read to you what it says. It says, you know, he, he refused to lend the least assistance in the making of.

[00:07:05] Provided. Not only that, in the case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, MD, DCL, LLD, FRS, etc.

[00:07:17] All his possessions were to pass into the hands of his friend and benefactor, Edward Hyde.

[00:07:25] Okay, seems fairly straightforward.

[00:07:29] But in, but that in the case of Dr. Jeckyll’s disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months, that’s incredibly specific, that said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll’s shoes without further delay and free from any burden or obligation beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor’s household.

[00:08:03] That is the extent that we get about what this will says. Okay, so if anything happens to Dr. Jekyll, everything should go to Edward Hyde. That’s normal. But then there’s this added thing like if he disappears or has any unexplained absences for a period exceeding three calendar months, then Edward Hyde ultimately just kind of steps into his role. Like he takes over his household. I mean, I hope it doesn’t mean he takes over his business. I don’t know what kind of doctor Dr. Jekyll is. There’s a lot of soup after Dr. Jekyll’s name. I see the MD so he’s a medical doctor.

[00:08:48] I don’t know what DCL, LLD and FRS are.

[00:08:55] I probably should have looked them up before I started this. But just. Let’s just say he has a lot of soup and he does a lot of stuff and he’s probably really smart.

[00:09:05] Edward Hyde, I don’t know, is any kind of doctor. So I don’t know that that means he’s going to take over his practice or whatever it is that he does. But just like that, he, he steps into his shoes without further delay and he’s free from any burdens or obligation except the members of the doctor’s household.

[00:09:25] And when he says a payment of a few small sums, this was something that actually was a little bit of a bone of contention with me. When I finish this, like when you, you’re a Servant in a household, like many servants are servants in households for generations. Sometimes that’s like your livelihood. That’s like. So what happens when he says a few small sums to the members of the Doctor’s household?

[00:09:52] Does he mean that he’ll just pay them and they have to go find work elsewhere, or are they retained by him or something? Like, what happens to these people that. These loyal people who are working for Dr. Jekyll? All this time I thought about that, especially by the end and. And you’ll see why. Like, I just. I wonder what is supposed to become of these people in these circumstances, under these really extraordinary circumstances.

[00:10:20] I think that the Doctor’s household and the servants don’t get enough credit and they don’t get enough love at all. And I understand why the book isn’t about them. But I tend to fixate on character perspectives that I actually think are more interesting sometimes than the main perspective.

[00:10:39] I’ve said this before, but like in Stargate, for example, at the beginning of the movie, the old woman, woman whose father found the Stargate and who now is, you know, sort of in charge of it, along with the military or whatever, that we meet, the actress whose name escapes me. I’m sorry, but she’s phenomenal. Oh, my God. An absolutely stunning woman.

[00:11:07] I was so interested. I think her name is Catherine.

[00:11:11] I’m so interested in her story.

[00:11:14] When I first saw Stargate, I was so interested when she meets Daniel at his lecture and she kind of is really taken in by him and his enthusiasm for who built the pyramids and all that, and she brings him, she makes him this offer. She’s like, you know, you don’t have. You’ve just been fired, you’ve just been evicted, you know, come with me, or whatever. I thought her character was so interesting.

[00:11:42] And then when you get even further into it and you see that, like, you know, she’s working with the military, working with the military, you know, they kind of came in and took over or whatever. But I was wondering what it must have been like for her character for her father to have found this when she was a child and to try to hold on to his work after he died. How to become someone who still had a significant amount of power and control over how the project was going to unfold.

[00:12:16] Her needing either she needed the help or the backing of the military to continue this, or if the military came in and just took this project from her and just kind of keeps her on as a whatever. I was really interested in what that took, like, what that Life must have been like for her to. To be able to hold on to her father’s legacy and at the same time be picking who she kind of wants to be part of the away team or the discovery team.

[00:12:52] I was so in love with her character and I would have loved to have gotten even just a little bit more of what things must have been like for her, you know, as she. I mean, she is old as fuck at that by the time we meet her. And I can’t imagine what that must have been like. And her perspective is almost more interesting to me than everyone else’s. And I tend to kind of gravitate towards, I guess, the meta fiction of stories.

[00:13:26] This was the case also for me with Jane Eyre. I was so interested in the wife in the attic. I just wondered how wild that must be to have her perspective. And there was a book written from her perspective and that was something that I instantly gravitated towards these other characters. I once wrote a short story in college, a really well written short story, I should add.

[00:13:54] I have no shame in saying that it was good written from the perspective of the guy whose responsibility it was to draw the mark on the piece of paper in the short story the Lottery, where like, you know, you pick the paper, you know, to determine how. How the crops are going to grow or whatever in that. In that village. The person that picks the paper and then they get stoned to death at the end. I wrote an entire short story.

[00:14:24] It wasn’t even that short, it wasn’t quite novella, but it was maybe like a good 20 pages just about the perspective of the guy whose job it was to draw that mark on that little piece of paper and like what that was like for him, knowing what, you know, whoever picked that, what that would mean and who he was in the village and how he went about his whole day before he sat down at that desk and drew that mark on the paper.

[00:14:51] It just kind of fascinates me, these little bits and pieces of these people that maybe have one or two lines of description or something in a story. And it’s like it stands out somehow.

[00:15:06] Similarly, there’s a character in here that’s not utterson that I just wish somebody would make a movie or something about this person’s perspective in this book. Because to me this person’s perspective is absolutely. Would be absolutely terrifying. And I think they probably tried to attempt to give the house people, the servants, the help, whatever you want to call them, a perspective in Mary Riley, but they. They sort of ruined it by making it this like twisted BDSM weird.

[00:15:56] I don’t know what the hell. I can’t even remember that movie very well. But her being in, you know, her being a servant and being in love with this guy. But the perspective of the servants in any story I think is well worth getting into. Because the servants see everything, hear everything, know everything.

[00:16:18] And they have the most to lose, let’s be honest. They have. They have the most that they want to protect and they have the most that they’re going to lose. And they are paying attention to everything. They know everything going on.

[00:16:31] And that mystery from the perspective of just the servants.

[00:16:35] I would love to see someone do that. If you’re going to do Jekyll and Hyde and you’re going to screw it up and leave things out, at least tell the story. That’s like the most interesting mystery of it all, which is if you are a servant in the household of Dr. Jekyll, what the ever loving is going on. And that must be fascinating and scary and confusing.

[00:17:00] And you could show so many different ways. You could tell the story in so many different ways from the perspective of people who aren’t in it. And that’s why Utterson is so interesting to me. Because he’s not in it. He’s not Jekyll. He’s not Hyde. He’s not somebody directly like.

[00:17:22] Like he’s not a victim of. Of Hyde. He’s not someone who has, let’s say, a considerable stake in the circumstances of the story. He’s just a lawyer on the outside of it. Except that he’s Jekyll’s lawyer. I mean, but for the most part, he’s outside of this. He’s not a doctor. He doesn’t even understand doctor.

[00:17:43] He has no concept of all of these really high ideas and you know, the allegory of it all. He’s just a dude who is very nosy and he wants to protect his friend. That’s it. That is the only thing about Utterson that makes him a part of this story. He is the one who is telling us everything that’s going on. He’s not even telling us. It’s not like he, you know, he’s narrating it. It’s not like he’s giving us Hyde’s perspective or Jekyll’s perspective. He’s not a voice. He’s the main character of this book.

[00:18:21] It is through his actions and his experiences that the story plays out. His conversations, yada yada yada.

[00:18:29] He is very interesting in that regard.

[00:18:32] He’s not giving us anything other than his nosiness and his desire to find out what’s going on. And not even the what’s going on of what’s going on in the world, but more like what’s going on with my friend and why is this happening to my friend and what can I do to help my friend?

[00:18:55] That’s it. And even then it’s somewhat limited as you’ll, as you’ll see.

[00:19:00] So here. His biggest issue right now is that his friend has drawn up this will that he thinks is absolutely insane and he does not understand anything about this.

[00:19:15] And it was bad enough. It sort of, you know, says in the book, it was bad enough when Hyde was just a name on this will. I’m leaving everything to Edward Hyde. And he didn’t know who the person was and, and it was just a name. And he couldn’t understand why Henry would be leaving his, you know, leaving all this to this guy. But it’s now worse now that he’s heard Enfield’s story about the type of person Hyde is. Now he’s like, oh my God, right? It’s, it’s one thing for it just to be some nameless, faceless figure, you know, not nameless, but sort of like just a name on a page that he doesn’t know. And that’s a little suspicious and strange. But now he’s heard all about basically Satan and he’s like, okay, what in the world has my friend gotten involved in this? This clearly has to absolutely be blackmail because why else would this well respected guy, my client, my friend, leave a will like this and leave all of his stuff to this detestable, disgusting, you know, immoral, satanic dwarf. Like, who does that so you can get his, you know, his, his, his, his concern. I don’t, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him being as concerned as he is. I, that makes sense to me. I’m not like, what is up with this dude?

[00:20:41] No, he’s a lawyer and this is his friend. And this will doesn’t make any sense. Especially this whole disappearance and unexplained absence for more than three months thing. That’s just weird and very specific.

[00:20:55] So I get that.

[00:20:57] So he pulls out this will and he revisits it and he’s like, no, no, no, no. This is even weirder than when I first got this thing. This is not okay.

[00:21:06] So what I love about Utterson and what makes him totally just ridiculous is that instead of like immediately going to see Jekyll, he goes to see his other friend, like this guy. This is what I’m saying. Someone needs to make this with, like, Lanyon as this, like, completely sassy, you know, dude who’s just like, you know what? You know, let me go talk to a few people about this before I go talk to Henry. Because why would we want to go directly to the person involved? That would be ridiculous.

[00:21:39] So he. This is already, you know, what, 10 o’ clock or something at night, it’s late and he’s decided to go see his. Another friend of their. There’s a mutual friend, Dr. Lanyon.

[00:21:53] Dr. Lanyon becomes a very important part of this story. Even though we don’t hear from him much. But what we do hear from him is absolutely crucial. He is another one of those perspectives that makes this story what it is. Without Dr. Lanyon, we wouldn’t have one of the most horrendously terrifying parts of this book.

[00:22:18] But initially, Dr. Lanyon is just another friend of theirs.

[00:22:23] So he goes over to Dr. Lanyon’s house and he’s like, if anyone’s gonna know what’s going on with Henry, it’s gonna be, you know, Dr. Lanyon.

[00:22:32] So he gets there and we get this wonderful description of Dr. Lanyon, which, you know, he’s hearty, healthy, dapper, red faced gentleman with a shock of hair that’s prematurely white in a boisterous and decided manner.

[00:22:51] And already you have a very clear indication of who this person is. At the sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. His geniality, as was the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye, but it reposed on genuine feeling. So he’s, he’s very, you know, theatrical like, he’s. He’s just sort of loud and, and oh, my God, hi. You know, that kind of guy. But it’s, it’s true and it’s genuine. And that kind of sets you up to understand that this guy may seem like he has a bit of a flair for being dramatic.

[00:23:27] But everything he says and does is with genuine feeling. That’s important to note. And it’s only like one line in here. But you kind of have to understand who Dr. Lanyon is in order to understand why his perspective of things is very important.

[00:23:46] So the two of them were old friends, old mates, both from school and college.

[00:23:52] And similar to Henry Jekyll, it seems like they all sort of either grew up together or went to school together and have known each other a long time, right?

[00:24:01] So they talk a bit and, you know, he’s like, I think we’re the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has.

[00:24:09] Right? That’s how he starts this off, this conversation.

[00:24:13] And Lanyon says, you know, I wish we were younger friends.

[00:24:18] But yes, you know, that’s. That’s definitely true. We’re his oldest friends.

[00:24:23] And he’s like, I haven’t seen much of him, though. And he’s like. Utterson’s like, really? I thought the two of you had a common interest in that. You’re both doctors, right?

[00:24:32] And he says, we had.

[00:24:35] But it’s been more than 10 years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me.

[00:24:41] He began to go wrong.

[00:24:44] Wrong in mind.

[00:24:46] Though, of course, I continue to take an interest in him for old sake’s sake, as they say.

[00:24:53] I see and I have seen devilish little of the man.

[00:24:57] And then he adds, such scientific balderdash would have estranged Damon and Pythias. And I think when I first read this, I looked up Damian and Pythias in order to have an understanding of what he was sort of suggesting.

[00:25:21] And I won’t get into it now, Suffice to say that it’s giving you some information.

[00:25:28] When he gives an example, he says that his unscientific balderdash would have estranged Damian and Pythias. So if you want to have a little bit of foreshadowing about what’s going on, it kind of helps to dig into that line a little bit.

[00:25:49] Utterson just sort of focuses on the unscientific balderdash line.

[00:25:54] And in his mind, he thinks, oh, okay, the reason they’re not close anymore is because as doctors, they had some sort of agreement disagreement, some sort of, you know, scholastic medical disagreement, right?

[00:26:16] And he kind of chalks it up to that. And he says, oh, you know, it’s nothing worse than that, really, you know, so he doesn’t think that this is a big deal. He just thinks that because he’s not scientific, this must be some science disagreement. Okay, fair enough.

[00:26:38] And he says, did you ever come across a protege of his named Hyde? And Lanyon’s like, Hyde? Nope, never heard of him.

[00:26:49] That’s. It.

[00:26:51] That’s that’s the extent of their conversation. Okay.

[00:26:56] So he. He leaves his place and I think he says, it’s six. Okay, it’s not that late, six o’ clock.

[00:27:04] And he’s kind of walking, you know, through the city. And here’s where it just takes that turn.

[00:27:10] He’s. He’s walking through the city and it’s kind of starting to get dark and he’s taking a stroll and everywhere he looks, all he can think of is the story that Enfield told him about Hyde running over the girl, right? So it’s like he sees Hyde everywhere. At every street corner he sees Hyde and a child and Hyde running over this child. And then, or it says, or else he would see a room where his friend lay asleep and Hyde is like standing over him, you know, like having all this power over him.

[00:27:52] And it’s like you, you’re seeing this like in his mind he’s so fixated on Hyde, he sees Hyde everywhere and he has images of him standing over Henry’s bed, staring down at him, you know, that sort of stuff. And it’s like, okay, you’re, you’re a little, a little hardcore about this, maybe a little obsessed. Like right from the start he’s just like, what the hell, right?

[00:28:24] And there’s a great line in here that caught me as being so extreme.

[00:28:31] He said the figure in these two phases, meaning seeing Hyde running down the street or seeing Hyde standing over Henry Jekyll’s bed haunted the lawyer all night. And if at any time he dozed out or dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses or move more swiftly and still the more swiftly even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of a lamp lighted city and at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming.

[00:29:09] The dude is laying in bed and literally is just seeing over and over Hyde crushing a child on this, on the street, screaming and leaving her screaming in the road like he can’t sleep. He’s just laying awake because this is all that’s in his mind. This, this, this image that Enfield put into his mind that this is what this guy does. Apparently Hyde just walks down London streets and crushes children at every corner.

[00:29:34] I’m just picturing that.

[00:29:37] It’s just. Look, if this is what you’re, you’re obsessing over like this constant, constant, oh my God, this horrible man crushes children, Crushes children.

[00:29:49] He doesn’t crush children.

[00:29:53] That’s not what happened and that’s not what is happening. You need to take a breath, you need to calm down the down. It ain’t that serious. Utterson has turned this into this nightmarish recollection, this obsessive like repeating, repeating, repeating of the most, you know, the worst version of that story that he could possibly imagine where literally he’s, he’s at every street corner crush a child and Leave her screaming. Is that what he is? Is that what Hyde does now in your mind, you don’t even know this guy, I swear to God.

[00:30:33] So then he decides that the, the biggest problem here is that he can’t get a visual of this, this man’s face.

[00:30:43] And he kind of says in this sort of wonderful way, he says if he could but one side set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll altogether away, as was the habit of mysterious things when well examined.

[00:31:02] I get this.

[00:31:05] As someone with extreme anxiety and extreme paranoia, I understand what it means to ruminate on something so much, right? The worst case scenario all the time. And it just plays on a loop, right?

[00:31:26] And the more you kind of take it apart and analyze it and really try to look at it in a logical way, sometimes it can lose some of that.

[00:31:37] That nightmarish aspect. If you take it apart and you calmly look at it and you, you get a glimpse of it. Like the anxiety comes from the not knowing and not knowing what’s coming, right? But if you, if you work out what’s coming and you work out what’s happening. And this is my case specifically with social anxiety. If I’m going somewhere I haven’t been, what I used to do is I would drive to the location a day beforehand and I would, you know, familiarize myself with the drive, with the location. If it was like an open building, I would go inside and look around and get a feel for what I was going to be stepping into the following day so that I could get that out of my head, that at least that bit of the mystery and the what’s gonna happen when I get there and where am I going and what am I gonna do? And that helped a lot with my anxiety going forward. Like, I felt like I could drive there confidently without thinking too much about it. I knew where I was going to go when I got to the building.

[00:32:45] And it’s funny because now that I’m saying that I used to do that.

[00:32:51] I did that when I was going into middle school and when I was going into high school.

[00:32:57] The middle school was so much larger than the elementary school and we would get our schedules pretty early during the summer.

[00:33:08] And it had our information, like where our homeroom was and our locker number. And I remember going to the middle school in the summer and going inside and seeing where my locker was, seeing where my homeroom was going to be, walking down the halls. Because that fear of that first day of school and not knowing and getting lost and not knowing where my locker was and all that stuff. I wanted to completely wipe that out of my mind. So I took myself there and I walked around the school and I think I took a friend, friend and I went just to look around and be inside. And it helped so much. Right. So I understand this line specifically that everything that’s happening in his mind, he just needs to. If he could eliminate some of the mystery, including who the hell is Mr. Hyde? And like, what does he look like?

[00:34:07] The image that Enfield left him with, which is no image at all, right? It’s just a feeling is so horrific it still stays with you even, you know, going into this next chapter. Your impression of Hyde is based on what Enfield said about him, which is he’s Satan, but that he’s like, you know, he describes this feeling that everybody can kind of understand and, and feel. You know, it’s a familiar kind of feeling. This like loathing and. And hatred, right? These are words that you know and that you understand the feeling of.

[00:34:44] And I think all of that combined has got utterson just, you know, his brain is exploding with anxiety and fear. I understand that. I do not hold that against him at all. I think he’s absolutely obsessed.

[00:35:01] But the more I started sort of pulling it apart, the more I saw this as like a deep anxiety and a deep paranoia and deep fear that he’s trying to alleviate by just getting information, including going to Lanyon. Maybe Lanyon knows this guy. Maybe Lanyon can explain it.

[00:35:19] And then he’s like, if I could just know what this guy looks like. If I could just get an image in his mind. Right?

[00:35:27] And he goes on even further to say, like he might see a reason for his friend’s strange preference or bondage parenthesis, call it which you please.

[00:35:42] And even for the startling clause of the will, at least it would be a face worth seeing.

[00:35:48] The face of a man who is without bowels of mercy.

[00:35:54] Okay, But I like the idea that he thinks that if he sees Hyde, maybe, you know, he could understand what Jekyll sees in him or why Jekyll would put him in his will.

[00:36:07] I get that too. Like, look, maybe this dude isn’t as bad as all that. Maybe Enfield is just a little over emotional about it or just he’s, you know, he was reacting to what happened to the girl, which, you know, if you had seen it is probably pretty horrific.

[00:36:25] Maybe if I see him and meet him myself, I’ll, you know, I won’t be. I won’t feel the same way. I get that too.

[00:36:36] So he Says he goes out and decides to like, look for this dude. By the chapter is called the search for Mr. Hyde.

[00:36:44] So it says from that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door and the by street of shops. So he would be there in the morning before office hours at noon, when business was plenty and time scarce. At night, under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse. The lawyer was to be found on his chosen post.

[00:37:09] So this dude has. We don’t know how long he’s been looking for this guy. He is just hanging out. He is stalking. He is going from place to place and just hanging out in the street morning, noon and night. And he says, if he be Mr. Hyde, I shall be Mr. Seek.

[00:37:29] Look, do you not have a job?

[00:37:33] Are you not busy? Do you not have clients?

[00:37:38] Look, I get it. You’re freaked out, paranoid, anxious, scared for your friend. But this, this is pushing it. This is like all those people sleeping over Mr. Enfield’s house and then going to the bank.

[00:37:54] There’s a lot of extreme stuff happening here. This is too much.

[00:37:59] Finally, and it doesn’t say how long, but I want to say that he’s been doing this for a week. I bet he’s been doing this for a whole week.

[00:38:07] He sees Hyde finally, after all this time, coming up to the door.

[00:38:12] And again, he’s just. He’s the first description we have. He says.

[00:38:23] I think he describes them as odd light footsteps.

[00:38:31] This is like a huge far cry from the giant juggernaut that crushes children on every corner.

[00:38:38] He’s. Again, Enfield described him as a small man.

[00:38:42] And Utterson says, odd light footsteps.

[00:38:49] Okay, so. So again, he’s not.

[00:38:53] He ain’t big.

[00:38:54] This isn’t.

[00:38:56] This isn’t some giant dude.

[00:39:00] When he finally comes into view and Utterson is able to get a good look at him, he says the description again.

[00:39:09] He was small and very plainly dressed.

[00:39:18] Okay, small, we get this. Again, these descriptions.

[00:39:24] Little, odd, light footsteps, small man, small, very plainly dressed. I’m not getting some impression of Hyde. That again, I’ve been seeing in the media all these years.

[00:39:40] I’ve never seen a small man with light footsteps in. And yet, remember, he’s a juggernaut who crushes children.

[00:39:47] That contradiction is so glaring to me and gives me such pause right there all the time. Because the description of him, the. The emotional descriptions of Hyde are huge.

[00:40:00] Hyde himself is very small.

[00:40:02] So the reactions that people are having over this tiny dude are incredibly, incredibly overblown.

[00:40:11] And in my mind. That means those are internal feelings, not external feelings. The only time you see people raving like lunatics about a person that they don’t know, it’s because they’re projecting. They’re projecting something in themselves that they see in this person and they are ranting crazily about it. Most times when you see someone you don’t know, you’re just like that person, right? You’re like you just like that person sucks. I hate them. When people are ranting and see posting online about this person did this and this and this and this. And they’re going on and on and on and on with these like big words and big descriptions. It’s almost a hundred percent people pulling something out of themselves because that thing was triggered by that person’s presence. And that means that whatever that trigger is has to do with that person specifically.

[00:41:07] So as far as I’m concerned right now, everybody who’s ever encountered Hyde or seen Hyde is talking about themselves. When they see this dude, he triggers them. He reminds them of something in themselves that they cannot abide. There is no physical description of Hyde that makes any sense or that like can correspond at all to the level of, of emotion that these people are putting into what they’re saying about him. They’re literally saying he’s Satan. I don’t know how you can determine that a person is Satan unless you know Satan personally, unless you’re well acquainted with Satan himself. As far as I’m concerned, all of these feelings that they feel are coming from inside of them. The call is coming from inside the house.

[00:42:01] End of Part one. Thanks for listening.