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Analysis of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Analysis of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Analysis of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde
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As individuals of society, temptation is something that constantly crosses our mind. Temptations can easily vary from person to person. These actions can often lead to many consequences. It is up to the person, to control and repress these urges. However, for some, such as Henry Jekyll, in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, these such urges can not be suppressed.
Jekyll is a successful doctor, who is looked upon with great dignity, “a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness”( Ch: 3 Par: 1). Hidden behind his exterior lies a monster inside him who is dying to get out. Months of isolation pass and the ones nearest him,
Within every being exists temptations, whether it be quiescent or dynamic, which fluctuates from one individual to another. Commonly negative, temptations ascend from lesser qualities of man and expose an individual to develop even more reprehensible ambitions. The story of a one man’s dark wishes is explored in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella, “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”. Properly termed, Stevenson perused the unnerving case of a respectable, proletariat-class doctor, who becomes associated and obsessed with Mr Hyde. It is this presence of the “duality of human nature that is created consistently throughout the Gothic Literature”.
In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, repression appears to be a common theme. Stevenson chose to incorporate this because it was a common Victorian belief. So what is Stevenson trying to say about repression by making Dr. Jekyll secretly self indulgent? Many people believe that Jekyll assumes the role of Hyde in order to carry out these indulgences that he otherwise could not. Also Jekyll chose to repress his urges because Victorian society frowned upon them. This idea is further elaborated on by Masao Miyoshi, in “Dr. Jekyll and the Emergence of Mr. Hyde”:
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.
In the novel, Dr. Jekyll goes through a lot to keep up the pretense that he is a normal, functioning member of British society. The façade he puts up is no different than the façade that any normal person puts up every day. Everyone has a secret. Everyone has something that would get them ridiculed and shunned by society for, whether it be a drug addiction, a secret lover, or homosexuality. This essay will discuss the skeleton Dr. Jekyll is harboring in his closet, and why he went above and beyond to
Jekyll’s addiction. This type of behavior is commonly used by addicts to avoid facing the uncomfortable reality of their problem. Jekyll's denial first comes up at his dinner party when Utterson comments that he is becoming increasingly informed about Hyde. “ ‘ Jekyll says’ to put your good heart at rest, I will tell you one thing the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde” (Stevenson 24). This quote suggests that it comes from a person who has a drug problem. The illusion of self-control maintain and increases the addict's dependence on his intoxicating substance or behavior, as long as he can develop a fantasy that his addiction can be arrested and his true self is dismissed for his behavior. "It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty, ‘Jekyll protests’ ”(Stevenson 64). Jekyll denied that he was not doing this. It was hyde who did all and not him. His response is similar to the addicts today who claim that they can stop using the drug and that there will be no harm. “To the extent that the addict cannot comprehend his behavior in terms divorced from the rhetoric of personal and moral failure, the addict likely will refuse to admit that he cannot govern his condition”. It is a type of denial that is used by Stevenson to show dr jekyll
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written by Robert Louis Stevenson during the Late Victorian era. Although "this horror story owes its allegiance to Gothicism rather than realism, many critics suggest that Robert Louis Stevenson 's tale of a man split between his respectable public identity and an amoral secret self captures key anxieties of the fin de siècle" (Norton 1669). The Late Victorian era was “the state of mind prevailing during the final decades of the nineteenth century” (Norton 1668). In the story of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, there are some reflects of the breakdown of Victorian values that took there undergo of their citizen responsibility as a whole.
To give context to the discussion of unacceptable pleasures, the general idea of respectable man's traits should be was having self-control and discipline. Martin Danahy says that “the mark of a gentleman is control over his body and to lose his control is to lose one's class status and to sink from a “Dr.” to a “Mr.”.1 This change of class can be when Jekyll turns into a 'Mr.' to execute his pleasures and in Hyde's ape-like behaviour and uncontrolled his emotions. What this 'change' of class represents is the struggle to reform to the ideals of the Victorian gentleman. This ideal Victorian man can be found in Utterson who consciously made a decision not to let these desires affect him. Yet, if Utterson represents the ideal Victorian man,
Robert, Stevenson L. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New York: Dover Publications, 2013. Print.
Page, Norman. "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson." Encyclopedia of the Novel. Eds. Paul Schellinger, Christopher Hudson, and Marijke Rijsberman. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998.
The good and evil within a person was one of the main themes of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (TSCODJAMH). The main objective of Jekyll’s experiments was to
Greed and duality in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Macbeth
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...
“We all have good and bad inside of us. It’s what we chose to follow that defines who we really are” J.K Rowling. That quote represents this novella really well by explaining that human beings can literally be whatever they please it is what you do with your “power” that makes you who you really are. In this novella The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson shows that there is a huge struggle between good and evil found in many themes present in the story such as the yin-yang, angel vs. devil and reality vs. pleasure. It clearly shows that as a human race we cannot focus with out the other emotion being present in their everyday lives.
...(43). The reader is draw to the wishes of Dr. Jekyll, each person wants to better themselves and each person finds themselves straying from the correct path in life. In trying to better mankind, Jekyll destroyed the decent man he was before.
The Victorian era of British history was a period marked by a resurgence of enlightened thought and a renewed interest in using science to improve society, yet this supposed path to human evolution was one paved with abjection, destruction, and sacrifice. As a result of the increased professionalization of university sciences and recent breakthroughs in scientific theories, “progress” as we call it coalesced in the form of some of the greatest scientists, scholars, and philosophers of the modern era. Yet with these advances came an increasing awareness of humanity’s recalcitrant status as a product of irrational, inescapable animality. Many members of the scientific community fervently worked to tease out what made humans exceptional among the vast lineage of animals that Charles Darwin had found that we evolved from. Indeed, many suggested that mankind and the natural world share many distinctions – or perhaps are one in the same – including author Robert Louis Stevenson, for whom “literature tend[ed] naturally to affirm the metaphysical connection between humans and animals” (Danta 57). Yet some sought to extinguish this link between the world of beasts in order to sanctify the realm of men, and Stevenson explores the resulting Darwinian nightmare in his novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The eponymous Dr. Henry Jekyll, one such esteemed scientific mind and by all appearances a paragon of Victorian enlightenment and virtue, was in fact possessed of the same spirit to renounce “the animal” that so pervaded the underbelly of Victorian medical academia. Dr. Jekyll’s failure, then, represents Victorian science’s ultimate recognition that the “animal within” is in fact a primordial, integral, and inextinguishable aspe...