Activity Nº2

1. What happens to Dr. Lanyon at the beginning of this section? What suspicions do you have about the cause of this occurrence?

"On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the doctor's with a small party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from one to the other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable friends. On the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against the lawyer. "The doctor was confined to the house," Poole said, "and saw no one." On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and having now been used for the last two months to see his friend almost daily, he found this return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The fifth night he had in Guest to dine with him; and the sixth he betook himself to Dr. Lanyon's."

Here we can see that Doctor Lanyon was confined into his house!! Probably, because he was going to die or something like that :(

2. What do Utterson and Poole find when they break into the cabinet? What do they expect to find that is not in the cabinet? 

They discovered that Dr, Lanyon was really shocked because of something and that he was going to die in few days.

3. What is the weather like as Utterson and Poole hurry to Jekyll’s house? Discuss how Stevenson uses descriptive language in this passage to create a mood appropriate to the climax of the story.

It is raining, which represents that something bad is going to happen. Stevenson applies this technique to describe many situations because it gives an special environment to the novella.

4. One issue raised by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is that of drug abuse. How does a person who is abusing drugs change in personality, appearance, and habits? What evidence in this section of the novella indicates that one of the characters is abusing drugs?

When someone starts to abuse of drugs, his or her life changes completely. They feel more secure in personality, thinking that they are better than the others, but that's not true. In appearance, the normally stop doing sports because their capacity is worse, and finally, their habits are changed into more sedentary ones, in which there are not sports, only parties and more drugs. In the case of the novella, it´s present first on Dr. Jekyll and then, on Lanyon, as in the page 43 and 44 of the novella appears: "There at least he was not denied admittance; but when he came in, he was shocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor's appearance. He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it was not so much, these tokens of a swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer's notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind. It was unlikely that the doctor should fear death; and yet that was what Utterson was tempted to suspect. "Yes," he thought; "he is a doctor, he must know his own state and that his days are counted; and the knowledge is more than he can bear." And yet when Utterson remarked on his ill-looks, it was with an air of greatness that Lanyon declared himself a doomed man.