One page, carefully chosen

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Near the end of his account, Henry Jekyll tries to describe a self he has discovered to be divided. Robert Louis Stevenson gives that division spatial and bodily force through truth, shipwreck, intelligence and a crowd of inner denizens. The passage belongs to a character explaining dangerous choices, not to a clinical statement about identity. Its language nevertheless opens many paths through doubleness, concealment, knowledge and responsibility. Read for the point where certainty begins to split. Your poem can accept, resist or rearrange those terms, while the source remains present to distinguish your selection from Jekyll’s confession and Stevenson’s larger design.