Robert Louis Stevenson's Use of Symbols and Places in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

649 Words2 Pages

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

Open Document