Theme Of Duality In Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ is a novel which is about a lawyer named Mr. Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He assumes the role of detective and creates a case-like story detailing the evidence and his experiences. The novel is distinctly about a split personality within one person. In the novel ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ the theme of duality is presented in different ways such as the development of the characters, setting, and double- consciousness.

The development of the characters is one of the ways in which duality is represented within the novel. Seen on a very unpretentious level Jekyll is a good man, viewed highly in his profession, Utterson describes Jekyll as having ‘every mark

This is the deteriorating of Jekyll because his physical features have dramatically changed over the course of the narrative, and his eyes have become ‘black’ because of the evil side of him that does not care about his appearance but only bringing pain to others.

‘Henry Jekyll’s full statement of the case’ allows the reader to finally have a glimpse of the events of the novel from the inside. Jekyll describes his true feelings about the theme of duality in this passage, he has ‘learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man’. This is Jekyll summarising his own theory of humanity’s dual nature, which states that human beings are half moral and half criminal, however we are truly one person, not two. Jekyll talks about these two states of good and evil as ‘elements’. He starts to discuss how he deals with these ‘elements’, he pronounces that he has ‘learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these elements’. Jekyll here is explaining his goal in his experiments to separate these two