Skip to content

Lanyon's Quotes

Chapter 2

"if anyone knows, it will be Lanyon," he had thought

  • Reader is established to be trusting Lanyon

"[Lanyon] was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white and a boisterous and decided manner"

  • Contrasts to the presentation of his character in Chapter 6
  • Presented as a healthy and optimistic man

"At sight of Mr. Utterson he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands"

  • Warm and inviting welcome
  • Traditional - links to his view of science and the traditional sense of a Victorian gentleman, polite

"Henry Jekyll had became too fanciful for me"

  • Lanyon is presented as conventional and traditional man of science
  • Jekyll wants to break free of the convention and tradition, Lanyon sees this as unrealistic

"Such unscientific balderdash"

  • Lanyon views Jekyll's scientific discoveries as unexplainable and nonsense

"would have estranged Damon and Pythias"

  • Damon and Pythias was an ancient greek story about two inseperable friends
  • Oxymoron implying the deep and irreparable rift between Lanyon and Jekyll

Chapter 6

"He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face"

  • Foreshadows Lanyon's death

"[Lanyon] 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"


"a look in the eye... seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind"

  • Lanyon has had a major shock, mentally unstable

"Lanyon declared himself a doomed man"

  • He is hopeless and know his death is soon, foreshadows his death

""I have had a shock"... "and I shall never recover""

  • He has seen something that he shouldn't have
  • Declares his fate, foreshadows his death

""I wish to see or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll," he said in a loud, unsteady voice"

  • His tone is impassioned, full of anger/detestation against Jekyll
  • Loud unsteady voice is a oxymoron with loud being declarative and unsteady being unsure, this gives an effect of Lanyon's fear/anxiety

""I am quite done with that person; and I beg that you will spare me any allusion to one whom I regard as dead.""

  • The noun phrase of "that person"
    • Reluctance of Laynon to dignify Jekyll with a name
    • "That" shows disgust
  • The hyperbole "one whom i regard as dead" is an unintentional foreshadowing to Jekyll's death

Chapter 9

"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"

  • Lanyon is sympathetic and shows pity
  • Bound by honour to do his friend's bidding

"be set aside without a grave responsibility"

  • Connotations to death
  • Foreshadowing to both of their fates

"I loaded an old revolver"

  • The revolver is a weapon symbolising death
  • Ironic that it is used in self defense however it fails to protect Lanyon and he succumbs to shock

"I have gone too far in the way of explicable services to pause before I see the end"

  • Gives into temptation
  • Weak nature of man

"My life is shaken to it's roots; sleep has left me"

  • Metaphor
  • Personification and sibilance - Jekyll/Hyde's influence left on Lanyon