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This essay aims to define the monster in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as the posthuman through the lens of contemporary philosophies of becoming. Dr. Jekyll transforms himself to Mr. Hyde with the help of chemicals. This work shows the imaginative attempts to change the body on the basis of science to escape from the severe conflict between religious and economical asceticism and individual bourgeois hedonism. This paper begins with the assumption that philosophy of becoming—not of being—best answers this question. In order to explain the nature, function, and meaning of the monster, I consult Gilbert Simondon’s theory of ‘individuation’, Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘becoming’ and ‘rhizome’. My application of these theories to the monster of the text reveals the conclusions: Dr. Jekyll has two incompatible heterogeneous substances—Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—in a single system. It constantly individuates in order to resolve its own tensions in metastable equilibrium—if Dr. Jekyll appears, Mr. Hyde disappears, and vice versa. This transduction is achieved by a rhizome formed through the connection of the human and the non-human such as chemicals. The human is not a fixed and stable unity, but a flexible and multi-layered being in the process of continuous becoming. It demands that humanistic values be replaced by post humanism. Such monstrous mankind is ‘Homo monstercus’—they reveal the explosive forces of life in continuous ‘becoming’.
