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Recommended: The Victorian age
Human Nature What is human nature? In almost every century someone has asked this question to try and find the answer. Each individual had a specific way of debating the matter. One specific author, Robert Louis Stevenson, described the duality of human nature in his book, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “Man is not truly one, but two.” (Chapter 10 page 125) Stevenson tells his prospective to the world through Jekyll. In his everyday life he saw a continuous struggle. He saw two natures fighting for control, and the winning nature determining his or her place in the dichotomous Victorian society. In the Victorian London society you were either the virtuous upper class that did no wrong or you were the scum of the earth. Jekyll did not only show his prospective, but many of the upper class in this particular society. Jekyll wanted keep the success and reputation that he had, but he also wanted to be able to enjoy his pleasures without being criticized by society. He felt as though society restricted him, and he hungered for freedom. He wanted...
disturbing. I am not a Jekyll didn't want to face his dark side and control it, he took the lead. easy way out but splitting his soul and having two separate lives both the extreme opposite of the other. Stevenson is trying to show the reader that this is the wrong way to do things because Jekyll dies and commits murder as well. Stevenson is telling us that we have to live.
On their weekly walk, an eminently sensible, trustworthy lawyer named Mr. Utterson listens as his friend Enfield tells a gruesome tale of assault. The tale describes a sinister figure named Mr. Hyde who tramples a young girl, disappears into a door on the street, and reemerges to pay off her relatives with a check signed by a respectable gentleman. Since both Utterson and Enfield disapprove of gossip, they agree to speak no further of the matter. It happens, however, that one of Utterson's clients and close friends, Dr. Jekyll, has written a will transferring all of his property to this same Mr. Hyde. Soon, Utterson begins having dreams in which a faceless figure stalks through a nightmarish version of London.
Discuss the significance of a biblical text or theme in Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
acts to a man of his status. This idea of there being two sides of
To begin with, Stevenson shows duality of human nature through society. During the Victorian era, there were two classes, trashy and wealthy. Dr. Jekyll comes from a wealthy family, so he is expected to be a proper gentleman. He wants to be taken seriously as a scientist, but also indulge in his darker passions.“...I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality/ of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in/ the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said/ to be either, it was only because I was radically both..."(125).
In this essay on the story of Jekyll and Hyde written by Robert Louis Stevenson I will try to unravel the true meaning of the book and get inside the characters in the story created by Stevenson. A story of a man battling with his double personality.
sides to him just like Dr Jekyll has. On one hand it says he is boring
Jekyll does deserve his final miserable fate because he commits several selfish deeds to the point where he brings his miserable fate upon himself. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson uses Jekyll to represent how man prioritizes by putting himself over others. Throughout the book, Jekyll’s two different sides are used to show that man is consistently selfish and will usually think of himself before others. Even though Jekyll has a good side and an evil side, both sides of him are selfish. Jekyll originally takes the potion for selfish reasons, Jekyll uses Hyde to conquer his own evil temptations, and in the end Jekyll gives into Hyde and completely gives up.
In Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll, in grave danger, writes a letter to his good friend Lanyon. With Jekyll’s fate in Lanyon’s hands, he requests the completion of a task, laying out specific directions for Lanyon to address the urgency of the matter. In desperation, Jekyll reveals the possible consequences of not completing this task through the use of emotional appeals, drawing from his longtime friendship with Lanyon, to the fear and guilt he might feel if he fails at succeeding at this task. Through Jekyll’s serious and urgent tone, it is revealed that his situation is a matter of life and death in which only Lanyon can determine the outcome.
middle of paper ... ... As Dr. Jekyll says, “With every day and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and intellectual, I thus drew steadily to that truth by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two”(Stevenson 78). He further adds,”. that I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both” (Stevenson79).
He believed that one side of a person would be nice and colorful whereas the other would be rude and dark. Stevenson who was brought up in upper class society, was fascinated with lower class society. With this, he seemed to become angry at what Victorian society was like and this is echoed in Jekyll. The book 'Frankenstein' heavily influenced Stevenson heavily as the
The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a confusing and perplexing one. R.L. Stevenson uses the devices of foreshadow and irony to subtly cast hints to the reader as to who Mr. Hyde is and where the plot will move. Stevenson foreshadows the events of the book through his delicate hints with objects and words. Irony is demonstrated through the names of characters, the names display to the reader how the character will fit into the novel. These two literary devices engage the readers; they employ a sense of mystery while leading the readers to the answer without them realizing the depth of each indirect detail.
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.
Mr. Hyde and Dorian Gray are characters that nearly match each other in their symbolism and manner. However, it is the key differences that make them remarkably interesting as a pair. They symbolize the battles between good and evil, though they have differing interpretations of morality.
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...