The role of the shadow self or duality dominates the story of Jekyll and Hyde. In the book, Mr. Hyde represents the dark side or shadow self of Dr. Jekyll, which the doctor can't face. Instead, the character creates a separate self. In an essay project, teachers can have students compare these two characters to other books or films, which explore the concept. Possible resources to use include "The Picture of Dorian Gray," the Harry Potter books or the movie "Fight Club." Students can explore this theme from a strictly literary point of view or they can add elements of psychology or mythology to create a more complete profile of the shadow or doppelganger in Stevenson's book.
Students can learn a great deal about how culture influences literature by undertaking a comparative literature project for the Dr. Jekyll story. Instructors can assign students the task of choosing one or more books that were written in the same time period as Stevenson's work, but that originated in another country such as America or Germany. Students can look for ways that certain aspects of the eras of modernization, emotional repression or industrialization influenced the literature of this age. They should draw parallels between the books that they choose, explaining the similarities that the books written in the same era but different countries have to Stevenson's novel as well as introducing the differences.
Studies show that people retain more of the materials they read if photos or illustrations accompany the written text. One way that Stanford University teaches students about creative writing and literature is to create graphic novels of the stories that the students in class write. Students studying "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" can employ a similar activity to familiarize themselves with the nuances of the text and to learn how to add transmedia elements such as illustrations or photos to their work to forward the story. Instructors can assign the class to work on writing a script for a graphic novel and then illustrating it using the descriptions of characters and setting provided by Stevenson's book.
"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" laid the groundwork for later detective novels such as the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Instructors teaching Stevenson's novel can help students delve deeper into the Victorian era and how it shaped the literature of its time by asking students to write a piece of fan fiction that combines characters from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" with the characters taken from one or more Victorian writers. Aside from Sherlock Holmes, students can incorporate any number characters from the era such as Jane Eyre or Alice in Wonderland. This exercise encourages students to think about how characters move a story forward and how to write about various themes and settings that repeatedly appear in Victorian literature.