Jekyll and Hyde TCEA Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian soldier from World War II once said: “The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” This quote is pertinent to the prevailing theme in the novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. The predominant archetypal theme is “good and evil exist in all humans, and we live our lives struggling with these two forces.” This theme describes the duality of good and evil in Dr. Jekyll—the good being Jekyll and bad being Hyde— and the struggle he has with both sides fighting for dominance within himself. Each side wants to become his only existing persona. The emotional mindset and physical attributes of Jekyll and Hyde show the good and …show more content…
Jekyll, and evil in Mr. Hyde are both trying to overpower each other. Both sides are fighting to dominate him, to become his only existing persona. Mr. Enfield describes to Mr. Utterson as to what he saw late one night: "Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child's body and left her screaming on the ground.” (3). The man Enfield talks of who trampled the innocent child was none other than Mr. Hyde. Consistently through the book, people of the town compare Hyde to “Satan” for his constant malicious wrongdoing against innocent people. The people he attacks are: a small young girl and a loved elderly man. These heinous acts could only be done by a completely cold hearted person. This shows how much his evil side attacks the good side of him. On the other hand, Dr. Jekyll tries hiding his evil Mr. Hyde side as well as he could. While reflecting back he states: “Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame.” (42). Jekyll’s statement explains how he keeps his evil persona repressed. Instead of letting the darkness of Hyde consume him, Jekyll remains his status in society as a sophisticated …show more content…
Jekyll struggles balancing the good and evil of both his good and evil persona, because of the people in his society. He tried hard to not to have one overpower the other, even though Hyde overpowered in the end. They especially struggled keeping their connections to each other a secret from the world. Hyde controlled the evil inside of him while talking to Dr. Lanyon: "I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon," he replied civilly enough. "What you say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my politeness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood ..." He paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria—"I understood, a drawer …” (39). Hyde’s patience was running thin while talking to Dr. Lanyon. What he wanted to do was go hysterical, but had to keep his composure for the sake of the reveal of his double life. This just shows that he was capable for a long time of the balance between his good and evil. Jekyll repressed Hyde because of his high status in society. He explained “And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is a novella written by Robert Louis Stevenson, a Scottish author. Written and published 1886, this novella reflects on the individual, and societal behavior during the Victorian era. During the Victorian era people, were supposed to behave like a normal person. Certain behaviors were highly restricted for example, showing evil. Instead, they were expected to give respect for everyone. People who acted out against the norm during this period were usually sent to asylums because such behaviors were unacceptable. People in this society did just that, they behaved as if they were perfectly normal. This does not mean that their bad side did not exist. Instead, they hid their
If Hyde has been described as Hyde "savage, uncivilized, and given to passion…poorly evolved" (Shubh), then perhaps he represents the true, original nature of man, repressed by society, norms, and conscience. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde suggests that this restrained, amoral side of human nature, once given a chance to escape, cannot be controlled. Even in this 'height of western civilization', Victorian England, this tempting evil can overcome even the most virtuous of men. Jekyll is neither good nor bad, but a man whose deeply repressed urges motivated him to separate, but not remove, the evil parts of his nature. There is a misinterpretation that Hyde is an unwanted byproduct of trying to create pure good, that Jekyll is not in control as Hyde, and that Jekyll doesn't enjoy being Hyde. In fact, Jekyll loves being Hyde, he revels in the freedom that he brings him (Stevenson 54), but the problems with his dual personality starts when he has to face the consequences of his actions. Jekyll has a difficult time balancing Hyde's debaucheries and Jekyll's rational, refined side. However, Jekyll realizes too late that he has indulged in Hyde too much and has let him grow out of control. At the beginning of the novel, Hyde was the “smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll” (Stevenson 57). His more youthful appearance represents how young and free Jekyll feels as Hyde, but also symbolizes how little his personality was seen before Jekyll drank his potion. Early in the novel, Hyde is easily controlled, Jekyll can use his potion to limit how often he transforms into Hyde (Stevenson 56). However, as he starts to morph back and forth, it starts to take more and more potion to control the switches until
From the beginning of time, humans have questioned the validity of intrinsic duality of man. Are humans born with both pure goodness and pure evilness or is the latter cultivated? In Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one man, a scientist named Henry Jekyll, concludes that all men are both good and evil, so he decided to separate the two natures within one body. The outcome of his experiment resulted in the formation of a somewhat different product than he had imagined a creature by the name of Edward Hyde. Although Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the souls of one body, there are differences and similarities in their appearance and personality that illustrate the natural duality of good and evil within a man.
Jekyll talks about the years before the creation of the potion that transforms him into Hyde. He summarises his finding of the dual nature, human beings are half good and half evil. Jekyll’s goal in his experiments is to separate two opposite elements, creating a person with only good characteristics and a being of only evil. He does this because he wants to free his good side from dark urges. He fails this experiment, in fact he only manages to create a whole evil person ‘Mr Hyde’. In the letter, Jekyll says ‘I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man . . . if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.’ The events of the novel inform the reader that the dark side (Hyde) is much stronger than the rest of Jekyll, this is why Hyde is able to take over Jekyll. This letter is really important for the reader so that the whole novel is understood. A lot of horror is created and it is all quiet in the reader's mind. The reader feels horrified by the way in which Jekyll seems to love and care for Hyde. Jekyll’s words make the reader angry that a man who was so good could enjoy becoming so
Jekyll is tempted to do bad things and he uses Hyde to overcome his temptations. Jekyll gets his satisfaction of doing bad deeds by becoming Hyde. Jekyll says “If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way” (Page 105). He states that he wants to do bad things but knowing he cant and still live the life he has, he uses Hyde as an escape from his temptations. Once Jekyll is able to control his temptations but still do bad as Mr. Hyde he says “I felt younger, lighter, happier in the body” (Page 106) Mr. Hyde is Jekyll’s way of escaping his sophisticated lifestyle and entering a totally separate way of life. Jekyll then didn’t feel any guilt for Hyde’s actions.
In the novel ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ Robert Louis Stevenson explores humankinds conflicting forces of Good and Evil. Through the central characters and the key theme of the duplicity of mankind Robert Louis Stevenson successfully portrays the theme of Good and Evil in the novel ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The bond between good and evil is a very prominent theme in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” The two characters are united into one human being, but contrast each other enormously. Although Dr. Jekyll represents the good, and Mr. Hyde represents the evil, both characters prove to have the other characteristics as well. Dr. Jekyll wants more than anything to separate the bond between good and evil, and performs experiments to obtain this goal. This results in the character Mr. Hyde who is filled with evil intentions. The narrator shows the evil of Dr. Hyde, “All human beings, as we meet them, commingled out of good and evil:
Throughout The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson uses internal conflict, plot, and characterization to show that inner evil cannot be suppressed.
During the story Hyde’s actions compounds our first impressions of him. Stevenson never says exactly what Hyde takes pleasure in on his nightly forays but it is thought to be of things that would ruin Jekyll’s reputation if they ever came out. There is thought to be strong ties to drugs, alcohol addiction and other dangerous dealings; ‘he had once visited her (the maid’s) master and for whom she had conceived a dislike’. In the very first chapter, Mr Enfield tells his friend, Mr Utterson, a story where he witnessed a strange looking man walking along a deserted street, who ‘trampled calmly over (a) child’s body and left her screaming on the ground’ when they collided.
In this book, there exist a battle between good and evil in the main characters where we are bound to ask ourselves what is superior between good and evil? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are easily seen as an allegory of the evil and good that exists in men. The book depicts the struggle with two sides of the human personality. Since Mr. Hyde seems to be taking over Dr. Jekyll, one could claim that evil is stronger than good. Nevertheless, Mr. Hyde ends up dead at the end of the story, which strongly shows the weakness and the failure of evil, so we have to ask ourselves whether good can be separated from evil. “Great people are involved in bad things this is the fact of life, yet this does not make them evil” (Stevenson pp 28-75).
In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a major theme in the story is the duality of good versus evil. In the novel, a character by the name of Dr. Jekyll believes in the dual nature of human beings, for he states, “ With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer 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.”. Dr. Jekyll was a well respected and well mannered man and eventually gets the urge to set free his “wild side” from his more friendly state that people knew. This is proven when he states, “I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my
Good and evil has been in our world for countless years. Numerous books have been written about this theme. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s mystery novella, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the author uses physical descriptions of Jekyll and Hyde to reflect good and evil.
Corey Casdorph Professor Hoff 2/25/2018 English British Literature Homework 4 1 Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case explains his fascination with Hyde by exposing his obsession for the evil side that Hyde exhibited. Transforming himself into Hyde was a welcome outlet for Jekyll’s passions. Jekyll became delighted to live as Hyde as it gave him the opportunities to live recklessly and dangerously, the evil persona that he so desperately wanted to be. I believe that most people, including myself, can empathize with his attraction to this side of his character because most everyone possesses an inner evil, if you will, that is begging to come out. I believe that the “inner evil” that I mentioned can either be interpreted to the
It is true that often it is easy to isolate the good from the evil. For instance, in the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the author uses the personas of Jekyll and Hyde to clearly divide the rather good virtues found in Dr. Jekyll and the wickedness found in his transformed version of himself, Mr. Hyde. However, this conversion illustrates the good and the evil that can be found within all of us.
Hyde’s evil plainly on his face. The girl could have screamed for the mere sight of him. To resolve this issue, he brings a check on Jekyll’s name which arises suspicion about his character among the villagers. Mr. Utterson, Jekyll’s lawyer, knows that all of his wealth is to be inherited by Hyde, which makes Utterson more curious about Hyde. Hyde’s crime does not bother Jekyll at first but his continuous misdeeds slowly gets Jekyll worried.