Passage 2: “Then you must know, as well as the rest of us, that there was something queer about that gentleman and something that gave a man a turn—I don’t know rightly how to say it beyond this: that you felt in your marrow—kind of cold and thin.” (pg. 31)
When this passage is presented in the story, the characters Poole (Jekyll’s butler) and Mr. Utterson are meeting. Poole believes there may have been foul play in regards to Mr. Jekyll, potentially a poisoning by drugs. The two men enter a laboratory and see and hear someone else inside. The mystery character is masked, as to not reveal his identity. Because of this uncertainty, they wonder if the masked person is Mr. Hyde. After the quotation, on the top of the next page, Poole tells Mr. Utterson, he is almost sure that the masked figure was Hyde. They wonder if Hyde murdered Mr. Jekyll, and if so, why is he staying near his victim verses fleeing? The two long hyphens are significant because they allow for a break in the remarks, where the author has allowed the characters to interject thoughts of their own. This shows the hesitancy they have. The use of the correlation between marrow feeling cold and thin is very interesting because one does not feel the marrow in their bones, but it gives the reader a dark, mysterious feeling about the character being described, Mr. Hyde. This quotation to the story is important because although it is describing only one small portion of a character, it gives the reader a feeling that something dramatic and dark is about to happen. The words “something queer about that gentleman and something that gave a man a turn” put the reader on edge slightly. The author is making the point that there is something not quite right with the character that makes you question what has he done, or what is he about to do??