Cain

Within the first chapter of the novel, the narrator, says of himself, “I incline to Cain’s heresy…I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.” What the Bible has to say about Cain can be found in GENESIS 4:1-26. The layered allusion foreshadows the good brother’s (Jekyll’s) dilemma of being faced with murdering the evil brother (Hyde) or allowing the world to continue to suffer his malignant presence. The irony is that in Genesis it was the evil brother (Cain) who slew the good brother (Abel), but the reference works since Hyde wishes to take over the body and possessions of his elder brother (Jekyll). Stevenson possibly describes Hyde’s physical deformity as producing revulsion in anyone who sees him as a parallel to him bearing the mark of the first murder, Cain, as described in GENESIS 4:14-15.