In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde... why does Hyde commit suicide??

Question

please help!!!!!

Answer 1

There is uncertainty at the end (in the "Confessions") as to who commits suicide, because in Dr Jekyll's narrative, Hyde seems to have taken over (first J. uses the first person, then the third at the very end). To me, Jekyll takes his life in order to prevent Hyde from really taking over.
There is something really interesting at the very end as well, it is the fact that RLS equates Jekyll's life to the narrative: he kills Hyde / Jekyll and closes his narrative with the word "end". So, Jekyll's suicide is also the end of the book, the end of the act of writing.

Answer 2

Ideally, Hyde causes Jekyll to commit suicide.
Stevenson indicts the hypocrisy of Victorian values. All around England, he saw that although on the outside most noblemen seemed to be fine and upstanding citizens, inside they hid dark secrets.
Jekyll is able to admit that after a few months of experimenting with Hyde, eventually the little man’s demands became increasingly extreme, seeking more and more power. Soon Jekyll has no control over Hyde, who appears by himself whenever Jekyll dozes off to sleep. He admits, "I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse."
In short, Stevenson is trying to say that if one gives evil an inch, it will take a mile.

Answer 3

All his options have been eliminated. Jekyll's personality and original appearance have disappeared finally and completely and the smaller, darker, and strangely repulsive Hyde cannot go out in public because he is being persued as a murderer by the police. The servants of the house know him as such. Hyde has no option but to kill himself. Here is the last paragraph of Dr. Jekyll's diary. He is lost to Hyde, and Hyde is doomed. (Great moment in literature, this...) When he says, "How I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair", he is referring to the evil half of himself, which shall live on in the person of Hyde when he is gone.

"Nor must I delay too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great prudence and great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and Circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from the action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us both, has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I shall again and for ever re-indue that hated personality, I know
how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fear-struck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end."

Answer 4

Gotta re-read that: he committed suicide? I haven't read it in a few years (my son had it as a middle-school assignment), are you sure it wasn't Dr Jekyll?