The Representation of Evil in Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Representation of Evil in Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

This essay will show how evil is represented in Robert Louis

Stevenson's 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'. 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' is

about evil and the duality of people's personalities. To show this I

will focus on Stevenson's use of characterization, setting,

historical, social and cultural context, settings, symbols and

language.

Robert Stevenson lived in the Victorian era, this was a very

repressive and strict society where it was expected that middle class

men would visit prostitutes. This was because people were not supposed

to be like animals and have animal instincts such as lust. This meant

that middle class men would only sleep with their wives so they could

have children and carry on the bloodline. This society would have

influenced Stevenson as he was a middle class man himself and he would

have experienced his own stifled emotions and hidden instincts, such

as lust and rage. Stevenson may also have taken inspiration for the

character Mr. Hyde from the crimes of Jack the Ripper who was

committing his violent crimes on women at that time. Stevenson may

have also been influenced by Mary Shelly's 'Frankenstein', which also

deals with the themes of dual personalities and evil.

In the text Stevenson uses a lot of powerful imagery when describing

Mr. Hyde. He uses words such as detestable and deformed. These words

create a picture in the readers mind and give them a general feeling

of horror, evil and mistrust. Through out the play Stevenson refers to

Mr. Hyde as an animal "God bless me the man seems hardly human". This

makes the reader picture Mr. Hyde as s...

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...one is particularley important and relevant due to the

advances of science, which have seen scientists able to clone human

embryos. As we can see in 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' and also in Mary

Shelley's 'Frankenstein" people who play with nature and do not take

responsibility for their work and creations ultimately end up creating

evil things which they do not understand or know how to control. It

could be said that Stevenson wrote the story as a warning to Victorian

society about repression and science or maybe it was just an

interesting mystery story, which happens to have like many fictions

and stories to have become almost true.

To conclude I think that evil is effectively portrayed in 'Dr. Jekyll

and Mr. Hyde'. Stevenson does this by focusing mainly on the themes of

duality and suppression of and in human nature.