“We all have good and bad inside of us. It’s what side we choose to follow that defines who we really are” (J.K. Rowling). This quote closely ties with the theme of good and evil that is present throughout the short story The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. In the story, the third-person narration follows Mr. Utterson around on his investigation of Dr. Jekyll’s seemingly uncalled for disappearances and Mr. Hyde’s evil and suspicious antics. Throughout Stevenson’s mystery-thriller short story, I concluded that Dr. Jekyll really did have to seclude himself in order to protect his friends (or face the possibility of one of them getting hurt), he could have ultimately prevented his own death if he had not attempted to create Mr. Hyde (intentionally or unintentionally) in the first place, and Dr. Jekyll would have gone mad with power if the attempt to separate his good and evil sides had succeeded. …show more content…
Jekyll had to seclude himself from society in order to protect his friends. This in turn leads to a shocking discovery by Dr. Lanyon, and so forth he becomes secluded as well. Mr. Utterson observes that Jekyll is shut in, and in turn asks Dr. Lanyon “Jekyll is ill, too. Have you seen him?” (40). Utterson is suspicious about his friend’s disappearance and sudden lack of communication, all caused by Jekyll being held down by Hyde for months on end. He decides to investigate, and learns that Dr. Lanyon, too, has something to hide that he will not share. If Dr. Jekyll’s good side was not being repressed by his bad side, he would be outside more often or throw more dinner parties like he had previously. The good and evil in Dr. Jekyll’s life is controlling him day by day, almost like his life is not his to live
Jekyll is respectable man with a very good career. He is a doctor that is highly regarded in his community for what he does as far as charity and his manners. As young man growing up, he was secretly involved in weird behaviors that made him a bit questionable. Dr. Jekyll finds his other side to be quite bothersome and he decides to experiment so he could try a separate the good from the evil. He creates potions and other things that really do not help. After so many attempts of trying to restrain his evil side, he brings forth Hyde through his failed experimentation. Therefore, he only accentuates his evil self to come forth. Hyde is an extremely ugly creature that no one could stand the sight of. He is deformed, violent, and very evil. Throughout the story, he fights against Jekyll to take over his life eventually causing Jekyll to murder one of his good friends, Mr.
Good and evil exist in everyone and any attempts to repress your darker nature can cause it to erupt. Dr. Jekyll was more evil than he wanted to admit to himself or any one before he even separated his soul. Born into a world of privilege and wanting to keep the impression of goodness and morality, Dr. Jekyll really just wanted to indulge in his darkest desires, choosing to hide behind his serum like a coward. However this became his fatal flaw and at the end of the day he could longer hide his true self.
As Jekyll reached adult hood, he found himself living a dual life. He had become more curious in discovering his other side. Jekyll insists, “Man is not truly one, but truly two” (125). This eventually led Jekyll into the scientific interests of separating his good and evil side, and he finds a chemical concoction that transforms him into a more wicked man, Edward Hyde. At first, Hyde was of pure impulse, but in the end, he became dominate and took control over Jekyll. Jekyll had never intended to hurt anyone, but he was aware that something could potentially go wrong. Jekyll presumes, “I knew well that I risked death, for any drug that so potently shook the very fortress of identity… utterly blot that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change” (127-129). One could say this makes Jekyll equally as menacing as Hyde. Jekyll couldn’t control the imbalance between the two natures. Jekyll foolishly allowed his evil side to flourish and become stronger. This is shown when Jekyll has awoken to find that he has turned into Hyde without taking the solution. Jekyll says, “But the hand in which I now saw, clearly enough in the yellow light of a mid- London morning…It was the hand of Edward Hyde” (139).
In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hyde becomes Jekyll's demonic, monstrous alter ego. Certainly Stevenson presents him immediately as this from the outset. Hissing as he speaks, Hyde has "a kind of black sneering coolness . . . like Satan". He also strikes those who witness him as being "pale and dwarfish" and simian like. The Strange Case unfolds with the search by the men to uncover the secret of Hyde. As the narrator, Utterson, says, "If he be Mr. Hyde . . . I shall be Mr. Seek". Utterson begins his quest with a cursory search for his own demons. Fearing for Jekyll because the good doctor has so strangely altered his will in favor of Hyde, Utterson examines his own conscience, "and the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded a while in his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there" (SC, 42). Like so many eminent Victorians, Utterson lives a mildly double life and feels mildly apprehensive about it. An ugly dwarf like Hyde may jump out from his own boxed self, but for him such art unlikely creature is still envisioned as a toy. Although, from the beginning Hyde fills him with a distaste for life (SC, 40, not until the final, fatal night, after he storms the cabinet, can Utterson conceive of the enormity of Jekyll's second self. Only then does he realize that "he was looking on the body of a self-dcstroyer" (SC, 70); Jekyll and Hyde are one in death as they must have been in life.
As the novel progresses, Dr. Jekyll becomes a prisoner to the part of him called Mr. Hyde because Hyde gains strength overtime. The rush Mr. Hyde brings him causes him to want
Jekyll hid away due to his fear of being found out. When Jekyll “was seized again with those indescribable sensation that heralded then change”, he went to “shelter” in his “cabinet” before he was “raging and freezing with the passions of Hyde” (64). For he was scared for the punishment he would receive if he was found out. Such as blackmail, losing standing in his community, while also receiving life imprisonment or death from the state. With this going on and his good friend Mr. Utterson trying to find out why he was gone, Jekyll was always stressed. When Utterson and Poole barged through the door, Jekyll couldn’t be seen for what he was. He hid his true authentic self to the very end. For when Utterson called Jekyll a “‘self-destroyer’ Utterson concludes, not only because he has killed himself, but because it is self-destructive to violate the sexual codes of one’s society”(Showalter 113). For the main reason, Jekyll ended his life was because he went against what was societal norms during the time. He was gay and that was illegal. Which is why he had a double life as Hyde. Which finally led him to become a self-destroyer,
Naturally the body fights the tensions of good and evil by justifying right from wrong. The body is persuaded by one side but ends up conquered by the other. It is a constant battle of pain and pleasure: a constant desire of imperfection from perfection. Dr. Jekyll wanted evil to be completely separated from his goodness. Hyde was not considered a human. He was a creation that possessed life only when Jekyll self medicated himself as a form of release. “Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde are not one person but two, not a single individual compounded like common humanity of both good and evil traits, with the one or the other in the ascendant at any given moment” (Sanderson). As two separate souls inhabited a single body, conflict w...
The story takes place during the Victorian age, a time when there were only two categories of people: good people and bad people. There was no way that one man could be considered acceptable without suppressing his evil side almost entirely. The reason that Jekyll restrained his evil side for so long was because of this dichotomous Victorian society. Most people, including Jekyll’s friends, Lanyon and Utterson, are content to stay molded in this ideal. However, Dr. Jekyll soon became tired of this hypocritical mindset and states that he “it was rather the exacting nature of my aspirations…. that made me who I was and…. severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature” (123). He had determined that he would find a way to indulge his more human nature while still yet living in acceptance among his colleagues. Dr. Jekyll soon did discover a method, but it inevitably came with a curse. Stevenson uses this to display that people generally tend to go with the societal flow and conform to other people’s ideas so that they will fit in.
The power of curiosity can change your involvement in a situation. Everyone’s curiosity gets the best of them, and they tend to involve themselves in situations more than they would please. Throughout the book, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” by Robert Louis Stevenson, the theme of curiosity is demonstrated. Some folks suggest, that there are better themes than curiosity to demonstrate the book, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” by Robert Louis Stevenson. However, throughout the beginning, middle, and end of this book, the theme of curiosity is demonstrated.
Stevenson uses many literary techniques to create suspense and amuses the readers. He uses the literary symbolisms such as paradox and symbolism. However the most important technique is point of view and the changing of narrators throughout the book. Many critics such as Alice D. Snyder, Peter K. Garett, and Vladimir Nabokov wrote literary criticisms about Stevenson’s use of language. Lots of the evidences come from the book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in order to support the critics’ claim. Peter K. Garett’s claim of Stevenson’s use of language is that the relation between Jekyll and Hyde is played out in terms of grammatical and narrative positions. Vladimir Nabokov’s claim was that Stevenson creates suspense and mystery by
Jekyll unveils his story, it becomes evident that Dr. Jekyll’s efforts to keep Mr. Hyde, his immoral outlet, reticent are in vain. Dr. Jekyll succumbs to Mr. Hyde once and eventually the pull of his worse self overpowers Dr. Jekyll completely. His futile attempts to contain Mr. Hyde were more damaging than auspicious, as Mr. Hyde would only gain a stronger grip on Dr. Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll writes, “I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught… My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring” (115). Dr. Jekyll’s inevitable passion for debauchery is only further invigorated by his repression of Mr. Hyde. By restraining a desire that is so deeply rooted within Dr. Jekyll, he destroys himself, even after his desires are appeased. Like a drug, when Dr. Jekyll first allowed himself to concede to Mr. Hyde, he is no longer able to abstain, as his initial submission to depravity resulted in the loss of Dr. Jekyll and the reign of Mr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are truly becoming one, isolation starts to become more of a hinderance. For the most part, this isolation he was creating helped him but it was soon to start doing the opposite. People started to see him less and less and started taking notice; “Even the master of the servant-maid had only seen him twice” (23). Since he was so secretive and hidden from everyone else no one knew of his struggles and how to help him. In another portion of the book Poole talks to Utterson saying: “You know the doctor’s ways, sir,’ replied Poole, ‘and how he shuts himself up. Well, he’s shut up again in the cabinet” (34). Dr. Jekyll was slowly getting worse in his transformations with Hyde. In every passing minute and day Hyde was slowly more and more overtaking, but he did not choose to ask for help. Instead he was slowly starting to shut himself off from the world and put himself in
Merriam-Webster defines ‘parasite’ as ‘an organism that lives in or on another organism and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host 's expense’.
Within the text of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson portrays a complex power struggle between Dr. Jekyll, a respected individual within Victorian London society, and Mr. Hyde a villainous man tempted with criminal urges, fighting to take total control of their shared body. While Dr. Jekyll is shown to be well-liked by his colleagues, Mr. Hyde is openly disliked by the grand majority of those who encounter him, terrified of his frightful nature and cruel actions. Throughout Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson portrays the wealthy side of London, including Mr. Utterson and Dr. Jekyll, as respected and well-liked, while showing the impoverish side as either non-existent or cruel.
In The Strange Case of Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson presents a battle of good versus evil. Doctor Jekyll, a scientist once renowned and praised for his social prowess in the community, delves into his hidden desires; performing unnatural experiments on himself, he transforms into his inner evil, Edward Hyde. Hyde has a gruesome appearance, suspect of deformity, as he is the very fabrication of evil . After running rampant on the town, committing minor and severe acts of crime, Hyde is defeated by Jekyll’s self-sacrificial suicide. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Rappaccini’s Daughter, there is an outward theme of moral corruption. Signor Giacomo Rappaccini, a scientist denounced for his dark methods, performs controversial experiments