Defining the Life of Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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Defining the Life of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The focal point of this essay is to define the life of Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the transformation he went through in becoming Edward Hyde. Dr. Henry Jekyll is a physician in London. He is very well respected and is currently experimenting the dual nature of mankind. Edward Hyde is a manifestation of Dr. Jekyll's personality. He is accused of committing evil acts throughout the novel.

The first scene consists of Mr. Richard Enfield's and Mr. Utterson walking along a street in London. Mr. Enfield has a recollection of a previous incident in which he witnessed an extremely unpleasant man trampling upon a small screaming girl while this man was running somewhere. A large crowd had gathered around and they saw the man, Edward Hyde. The crowd forced the man to give money to this girl for trampling over her. Hyde did not run over her for any reason. He just did it out of spite and evil. He represents all the evil in the world. The reaction of others to him is one of horror because while looking at him, others feel a desire to strike out at him and kill him. His physical appearance brings out the worst evil in other people. Since Hyde represents evil, he is symbolically represented as being much smaller than Dr. Jekyll.

I believe Dr. Jekyll created Hyde because he had a theory that man has a good side and a bad side. While investigating this, he developed a potion that could release the evil in a person in the form of a totally different person. Then this person could commit any evil act it wanted, and then drink the potion to return back to normal. The only problem with this is the fact that he drank this potion so many times that he was no longer able to control this process. He was unable to transform back into Dr. Jekyll.

Another example of Hyde's evil is in the killing of Sir Danvers Carew. Sir Danvers appears to have been killed for no apparent reason. The murder of Sir Danvers was seen by a maid who was working nearby. She states that Hyde meet with a man in the street. After the two exchanged words, Mr. Hyde lifted his heavy walking stick and clubbed the old man to death.

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