Robert Louis Stevenson's Use of Symbols and Places in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. Stevenson qualified as a lawyer but his one ambition was to become a writer, with support from his father he later fulfilled his ambition and went on to write Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Victorian England at this time was going through massive change and industrialisation, within this time huge progress was made in technology, industry and commerce. However, there was still a great deal of poverty and suffering which Victorian people wished to ignore. In this story I will be exploring the two sides of human nature to hold a mirror up to Victorian society. To do this successfully I will be looking at symbols and places in the story where I can make valid points on. “Man is not one, but truly two.” Is Jekyll’s idea that each of us is made into two separate people who battle for supremacy and control. We learn in the book that Dr Jekyll plays the part of Mr Hyde, this being the wholly evil side to him and Dr Jekyll being the lighter side of him. He accomplished this metamorphoses by making a potion to transform himself. The concept being behind this being that a person who appears as well mannered and is respected in public can take on a personality and appearance that of the opposite of his normal one. The idea of metamorphosis has been used in modern comic book and superhero stories of the twentieth century. Spiderman being one of them is another victim of a scientific experiment, which goes wrong when he is bitten by a spider created in a lab. He finds himself possessed with spider like abilities from that day onwards. His personality does change to some extent, with him being more confident in himself and more cheerful. With his newfound powers, he helps to stop evil acts in the city. He only hurts the people who deserve it such as the wrongdoers. If Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde were given separate lives I think we would be
Stevenson focuses on two different characters Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but in reality these are not separate men, they are two different aspects of one man’s reality. In the story, Dr. Je...
Stevenson's Use of Literary Techniques in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dual nature of man is a recurring theme. Jekyll constantly struggles with good and evil, the expectations of Victorian society, and the differences between Lanyon and Jekyll.
Stevenson's Use of Literary Techniques in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hyde becomes Jekyll's demonic, monstrous alter ego. Certainly Stevenson presents him immediately as this from the outset. Hissing as he speaks, Hyde has "a kind of black sneering coolness . . . like Satan". He also strikes those who witness him as being "pale and dwarfish" and simian like. The Strange Case unfolds with the search by the men to uncover the secret of Hyde. As the narrator, Utterson, says, "If he be Mr. Hyde . . . I shall be Mr. Seek". Utterson begins his quest with a cursory search for his own demons. Fearing for Jekyll because the good doctor has so strangely altered his will in favor of Hyde, Utterson examines his own conscience, "and the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded a while in his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there" (SC, 42). Like so many eminent Victorians, Utterson lives a mildly double life and feels mildly apprehensive about it. An ugly dwarf like Hyde may jump out from his own boxed self, but for him such art unlikely creature is still envisioned as a toy. Although, from the beginning Hyde fills him with a distaste for life (SC, 40, not until the final, fatal night, after he storms the cabinet, can Utterson conceive of the enormity of Jekyll's second self. Only then does he realize that "he was looking on the body of a self-dcstroyer" (SC, 70); Jekyll and Hyde are one in death as they must have been in life.
Jekyll has captured life for a while he is not just one, but two, Hyde
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...
The Titles of Dr. Jekyll in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
In the novel, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson explores many views on human nature. He uses characters and events in the novel to present his stance on the major theme: “man is not truly one, but truly two” (125). Branching from this major theme are many more specific views on human nature divided into good and evil.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are the same person all within the body of Dr Jekyll. He switches between the two willingly for science and his own personal desire. This can be proven in the last chapter of the book where we see
...ry one may think that Jekyll should have reflected on his behaviour and when he got inkling to separate the two sides he should have stopped, as then he wouldn’t have been playing with God and becoming a heretic in the eyes of society.
Mr Hyde is the evil side of Dr Jekyll, but he is restrained from being
Due to their concealed yet present inner evil, humans are naturally inclined to sin but at the same time resist temptation because of influence from society, thus illustrating a duality in humanity. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde focuses on how humans are actually two different people composed into one. The concept of dual human nature includes all of Hyde’s crimes and ultimately the death of Jekyll. Jekyll proposes that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” and describes the human soul as a constant clash of the “angel” and the “fiend,” each struggling to suppress the other (Stevenson 61, 65). Man will try to cover up his inner evil because once it rises to the surface everyone will know the real...
The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a confusing and perplexing one. R.L. Stevenson uses the devices of foreshadow and irony to subtly cast hints to the reader as to who Mr. Hyde is and where the plot will move. Stevenson foreshadows the events of the book through his delicate hints with objects and words. Irony is demonstrated through the names of characters, the names display to the reader how the character will fit into the novel. These two literary devices engage the readers; they employ a sense of mystery while leading the readers to the answer without them realizing the depth of each indirect detail.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is good versus evil as well as our bad side triumphing over your good side. Even if some critics may think that your bad side almost always triumphs because of movies or any other place that has happened, the yin and yang symbol is of perfect balance, and someone cannot possibly have a double-sided appearance where the two sides are opposite. It is clear to see that in Robert Louis Stevenson’s writing, a person can have two opposite personalities, the yin and yang symbol is not evenly balanced, and your bad side can triumph your good side. As Robert states, “All human beings are commingled out of good and evil” Hopefully those critics may now understand not to believe what they see or may hear about when dealing with good versus evil and evil triumphing over