How effective is the setting in creating tension and suspense in
Stevenson’s works?
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a novella about a scientist who experiments
with the morals of good and evil. He then decides to try to separate
these elements and difficulties arise with this. This novella concerns
how one individual has conflicting emotions that are both good and
evil. Dr Jekyll tries to make one-person ‘wholly’ good and another
‘wholly’ evil, but his experiments become quite dangerous.
‘The Body Snatcher’ is about two old friends, Fettes and Doctor
Macfarlane, who studied under someone who was a famous, but
unorthodox, anatomist. They would collect bodies for this person but
they soon regret collecting one body. The confession of William Burke,
murderer and procurer of corpses, inspired this short story.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is set in Soho, London, which is famous for
being the ‘seedier’ side of London in the nineteenth century. At this
time there was a great divide between the poverty-stricken and the
rich. Even in the daytime, London was very dark due to the industrial
London smog, and this adds to the atmosphere of fear, creating tension
to make the reader feel uneasy. Stevenson presents the atmosphere of
chill and darkness, therefore making the reader have a sense of
foreboding about coming events. ‘The Body Snatcher’ is set in Robert
Louis Stevenson’s home town of Edinburgh. At that time, it was illegal
but common, to collect bodies and experiment on them, and this is the
basis of this tale. Experimenting on bodies at this time was not
acceptable; there is already something chilling about this practice,
and collecting bodies from graves is also very unnerving, done late at
night. By setting these ...
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...l not describe the certain character as well,
therefore there is always something about that person that the reader
wants to find out. This technique is very effective in creating,
tension and suspense. I found it had greater suspense, especially at
the beginning, with Fettes and Macfarlane arguing over something that
people do not know about; their secret past lives that we have yet to
find out about. I think that the reader would appreciate his works
because they are so full of tension and suspense, and he sets the
scene very effectively, the atmosphere is dark and gloomy, the stories
take place in areas people often avoid, such as dark alleys and
graveyards. The characters in the stories are often threatening,
sinister and menacing. Yet the reader feels the need to find out what
happens next. Stevenson creates great tension and suspense in his
writing.
Stevenson then went on to put a scary touch to the story by telling us
Stevenson uses many literary techniques to create suspense and amuses the readers. He uses the literary symbolisms such as paradox and symbolism. However the most important technique is point of view and the changing of narrators throughout the book. Many critics such as Alice D. Snyder, Peter K. Garett, and Vladimir Nabokov wrote literary criticisms about Stevenson’s use of language. Lots of the evidences come from the book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in order to support the critics’ claim. Peter K. Garett’s claim of Stevenson’s use of language is that the relation between Jekyll and Hyde is played out in terms of grammatical and narrative positions. Vladimir Nabokov’s claim was that Stevenson creates suspense and mystery by
How does Stevenson maintain the reader’s interest in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Stevenson keeps the readers interested by using the supernatural and horror side of things to make it scary because when the story first came out, they weren’t used to scary stories. He also uses mysteries to keep the readers wondering, guessing and wanting to know more. He includes moral messages in the story to keep people/the readers questioning themselves, wondering if they are more similar to Mr. Hyde than they think. Stevenson sets all the action in the story during the night.
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll’s struggle between two personalities is the cause of tragedy and violence. Dr. Jekyll takes his friends loyalty and unknowingly abuses it. In this novella, Stevenson shows attributes of loyalty, how friendship contributes to loyalty, and how his own life affected his writing on loyalty.
To conclude the way that Stevenson has described Hyde and what Jekyll has done in most parts he has related it to the devil which in Victorian times was considered very dangerous, even though today he’s not considered that powerful it would still make a big impact. Stevenson has been successful in using many elements of a shocker/thriller to write a novella with a much deeper moral significance because every aspect of the story relates back to the Victorian morals of 1837 till 1901 and for a 21st century reader some parts of the novella will make them think what is really happening around them now and whether it is right or not!
“The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde” is a novella written in the Victorian era, more specifically in 1886 by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. When the novella was first published it had caused a lot of public outrage as it clashed with many of the views regarding the duality of the soul and science itself. The audience can relate many of the themes of the story with Stevenson’s personal life. Due to the fact that Stevenson started out as a sick child, moving from hospital to hospital, and continued on that track as an adult, a lot of the medical influence of the story and the fact that Jekyll’s situation was described as an “fateful illness” is most likely due to Stevenson’s unfortunate and diseased-riddled life. Furthermore the author had been known to dabble in various drugs, this again can be linked to Jekyll’s desperate need and desire to give in to his darker side by changing into Mr Hyde.
Stevenson creates suspense in “The Last Night” by withholding information from the reader and by creating a gothic setting which reflects contemporary fears in London in the19th century. He also uses the character of Mr Hyde to create suspense by referring to the ideas of Darwin.
In this book, Dr. Bass takes us behing the scenes of the Body Farm. An engaging storyteller, he reveals his hardest and best cases. While this book tells about Bass’s life, it is centered around the Body Farm itself because it tells of how it was started. This book is very informative and it tells you that even though it is a dead body, it can still tell many tales and it can mean a lot to history, This book shows just how the dead can come to
In the novel “The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” a number of
choose the setting as London due to the fact that during this time London represents a division within essential unity with the the divide of old and new culture. This rightfully represents Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is also the original setting for the book (Stevenson 2).
Within the text of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson portrays a complex power struggle between Dr. Jekyll, a respected individual within Victorian London society, and Mr. Hyde a villainous man tempted with criminal urges, fighting to take total control of their shared body. While Dr. Jekyll is shown to be well-liked by his colleagues, Mr. Hyde is openly disliked by the grand majority of those who encounter him, terrified of his frightful nature and cruel actions. Throughout Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson portrays the wealthy side of London, including Mr. Utterson and Dr. Jekyll, as respected and well-liked, while showing the impoverish side as either non-existent or cruel.
Jekyll and Hyde match most of the criteria needed to produce. traditional gothic novel, Stevenson builds up tension and keeps the reader gripped by certain things in the novel. Firstly mysterious violence keeps the readers well gripped. “ the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground.” ... ...
The reader is drawn to the plot of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde through the literary devices Stevenson employs. Foreshadowing displays the sense of mystery throughout the novel, the foreshadowing of the actions of Mr. Hyde leaves the reader wondering what will happen next. The ironic nature of Dr. Jekyll relates to the reader as a person, no person is completely perfect and Dr. Jekyll exhibits the natural wants and desires of humans. The irony behind Mr. Hyde adds an enigmatic side to the plot. These two devices expose the readers to the complexity of the novel and reveal the inner meaning of the hidden details.
Stevenson’s most prominent character in the story is the mysterious Mr Hyde. Edward Hyde is introduced from the very first chapter when he tramples a young girl in the street, which brings the reader’s attention straight to his character. The reader will instantly know that this person is a very important part of this book and that he plays a key role in the story. This role is the one of a respectable old man named Dr Jekyll’s evil side or a ‘doppelganger’. This links in with the idea of duality. Dr Jekyll is described as being ‘handsome’, ‘well-made’ and ‘smooth-faced’. On the other hand, Mr Hyde is described as being ‘hardly human’, ‘pale and dwarfish’, giving of an impression of deformity and ‘so ugly that it brought out the sweat on (Mr Enfield) like running’! These words all go together to conjure up an image in the mind of an animal, beast or monster. During the novel...
wrong, a lot like the way Mr Hyde was thought of. So to Mr Utterson,