1. 08 November 2019
Answer in full sentences!
What does a good Literature essay look like? How do authors use our own imaginations to create their story? How does literature use language to reel us in? What Assessment objective is this?

2. What do you have to do?

3. What are the timings of each section?
Why is important to read the instructions?
What happens when we are in stress mode?
Even if you think you know… read them again!

4. Let’s SPITE the extract!

6. 321!

8. LAT Question

9. Grade 9
Extract
Essay

10. How to Write a Literature Essay
Starting With this Extract, How does Stevenson Present Utterson?
Starting With this Extract, How does Stevenson Present Hyde?

11. Your turn…
You will be given a 12 point plan and a section of a grade 9 essay.
I would like you to work your way through the points and highlight where they have met the criteria…and which number they have met.
What are they doing exactly? Why is the essay so good?
What points does it hit on the mark scheme?

12. How to Write a Literature Essay
Begin an introduction linking the words of the question to the writer’s purpose.
Keep exploring the writer’s wider purpose – what does his novel suggest their society?
Always refer to society, as this will always involve the writer’s purpose.
Use tentative language to show you are exploring interpretations – e.g. “perhaps”.
Use connectives which tell the examiner (and remind you!) that you are dealing with alternative interpretations: although, however.
Embed your quotations within the sentence.
Use words such as suggests, implies, emphasise, reveals, conveys etc, instead of ‘shows’.
Use literary language that students of literature at university would also use.
All novels deal in contrast and juxtaposition, or pointing out similarities – use these words.
Always quote from the ending and interpret the ending – this is where the author makes their purpose most clear.
Write a conclusion which deals with how the author wants us to view or change society.
Try to include a quotation in your last sentence.

13. Search for Mr Hyde
Stevenson questions the Christian setting by placing the “church … so conveniently near.” “Conveniently” is ambiguous, perhaps a sign of his devout proximity to God, or perhaps conveying how little effort he wishes to expend in attending, because it is done only out of convention or duty. The emphasis of “so” suggests the latter interpretation.
Having questioned Utterson’s faith, Stevenson presents him as a proxy for the reader, “his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved” by the “tale”. This subtly suggests we have more in common than our “imagination” and being “enslaved” by this great story: we are also suffering from a weakness in our Christian faith.
Give out a copt to all students. Break them into separate pages. Small text for LATS

14. Search for Mr Hyde
The description is now filled with suppressed sexual desire, as Utterson “tossed in the gross darkness”. “Darkness” works as a motif in the novella, continually reminding us of Hyde’s evil, which always symbolises the evil of these hypocritical gentlemen. Utterson appears trapped in this “darkness” which represents his ignorance of Hyde’s identity, his fear of Hyde’s lack of “mercy”, but also that Utterson shares his evil nature. This is powerfully emphasised by the sibilance, suggesting a sinister tone.
The “darkness” is also described metaphorically as “gross”, meaning huge and thick. This allusion to impenetrability is emphasised by the “curtained room” which represents the theme of concealment which also runs as a motif in the novella, and is dramatised through Jekyll’s alter ego’s name, “Hyde”.

15. Search for Mr Hyde
Next Stevenson points to the reason that Hyde is evil: he personifies the evil hypocrisy of Victorian society. Consequently, Utterson fantasises about “the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city”. This metaphor reveals that London’s true nature is “nocturnal”, and he emphasises this link to nature calling it a “field”. This prepares the ground for a discussion of Jekyll’s true nature, and also that of the other bachelor, Utterson. Contemporary readers would also have noticed that Enfield and Dr Lanyon, the other protagonists, are also bachelors. Stevenson is hinting at what Oscar Wilde called only a decade later, “the love which dare not speak its name”, homosexuality.

16. Search for Mr Hyde
What is revealed is desire itself, personified by “a figure to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding.” Although this figure, in Utterson’s mind, is the mysterious “Hyde”, Jekyll is enslaved by the desire for the man “to whom power was given.” This is the same “enslavement” of the “imagination” which has affected Utterson’s dreams. Stevenson therefore suggests that Utterson shares the same sexual desire. It is odd that Hyde has already been named, but that Utterson does not name him as the “figure”. Stevenson wants us to focus on that oddness, because it means the figure could be Utterson himself, fantasising about a sexual relationship with his great friend, Jekyll.

17. Search for Mr Hyde
To allude to this more strongly, Utterson distorts the memory of Hyde as a “Juggernaut” who he now imagines moving at ever increasing speed in a parody of sexual climax, to “glide” and then “move the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to dizziness”. There was nothing dizzy in Hyde’s trampling of the girl, this effect is being produced on Utterson, as a result of his own desires. Stevenson reveals them only in dreams, because they are forbidden. A man who is homosexual is literally lost to society, and Stevenson illustrates this with the metaphor of the city being made up of “wider labyrinths”.

18. Search for Mr Hyde
Stevenson next employs repetition to suggest that this figure, standing beside Jekyll’s bed is not just Hyde, or even just Utterson, but a personification of homosexual desire. Consequently, “the figure had no face … it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes”. One reason that Utterson can’t hold on to the face is that he dare not admit that it is his own. Another reason perhaps is jealousy or sexual curiosity. He wonders what face has drawn Jekyll so successfully that Hyde can now “blackmail” him.

19. Search for Mr Hyde
The final reference to his face is cleverly ironic. Utterson feels “curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde”. The emphasis of “real” tells the reader that Hyde is not who he seems. This again is a theme of the novella, because the “real” face of Hyde is of course Dr Jekyll. Hyde is not separate from Jekyll, he is only the evil part of his nature made flesh. But another irony is that perhaps Hyde’s evil is just a social construct. He may only be disgusting to a Victorian audience because he is homosexual.

20. Search for Mr Hyde
Stevenson makes this as explicit as he dare when Utterson wonders about Jekyll’s “reason for his friend's strange preference or bondage (call it which you please)”. “Strange” is a deliberate echo of the title, suggesting that Jekyll’s “duality of man” is not just the science which allows him to create a new being, but the revelation this duality is potentially present in all men. “Bondage” is not used here as a modern sexual reference. However, it still implied “enslavement” to desire, and therefore once more suggests Jekyll’s sexual desire for Hyde.

21. Search for Mr Hyde
Their society dictates that homosexual desire is evil, and for this reason Utterson reminds himself that Hyde’s face encouraged Enfield to have “a spirit of enduring hatred.” We remember that in chapter one, Enfield had to hold back a desire to murder Hyde. Here Stevenson suggests that the social evil is not homosexual desire, but the hypocritical need to suppress it, which leads finally to Hyde, “the self-destroyer”, taking his own life, and why his readers demand an ending in which Jekyll is also killed for bringing his desires to life in the shape of Hyde.

22. How can we consolidate all this knowledge…?1
Note down any difficult or interesting vocabulary, find out and record its meaning. 2
Go back to your original attempt at the essay and level up! How can you steal the grade 9 format? 3
Create a mind-map of techniques you will try and remember… 4
Write down 5 key quotes, it should be clear what they relate to/why you have chosen them. 5
Explore what structural features are used. Can you spot any techniques? Can you explain their effect?