Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde Analysis

Stevenson develops the idea that evil can be seen visibly through physical appearance, and is always the ugliest form of a human being. When Dr. Jekyll transforms into the 100% evil Mr. Hyde his mentality and mindset changes, but so does his appearance. Stevenson depicts the change from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde as a change that can be visibly seen. Mr. Hyde is much uglier than Dr. Jekyll, as well as more evil in nature. When Mr. Utterson first sees Mr. Hyde he considers him deformed and repulsive, “Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky,

In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it is clear that the biggest theme of the story is the concept of good against evil. In the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the conflict exists within the same person. It is generally believed that this internal struggle exists in everyone, and that “man is not truly one, but truly two.” It suggests that everyone has a dual personality , and a good and evil side exists in everyone. The struggle supposedly is usually a close fought battle that is close to a stalemate. But in the story, is there a clear winner of this internal battle? Does Mr. Hyde completely take over or does Dr. Jekyll ultimately resolve the situation? The battle is very tight, and there is, in fact, a clear winner in the

People would rather be miserable and pretend to be someone else, than risk judged for who they really are. In the novella, Stevenson uses Dr. Jekyll’s experiment to show how far people are willing to go to be freed from judgment of society. Dr. Jekyll conducted an experiment that split his personality into two people, the good and evil side of him. Dr. Jekyll knew he was risking his life before he started but he thought it would be worth it to get to be the other side of him for once. “I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew well that I risked death.” (57) Dr. Jekyll was willing to risk everything to experience his other side. When Dr. Jekyll drank his chemical solution, he transformed into Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde was completely free to be evil without his conscience telling him it was wrong. No one really knew who Mr. Hyde was so he had no reason to fear judgment from others. He was completely free to act as himself. This relates to the real world in that people use drugs and alcohol to transform into their dark side. When using drugs or drinking alcohol, your body loses all control over your consciousness. The substances are more powerful and led people to do things they would normally not even think they are capable of and might regret when experiencing withdrawal of the

Seeing how Jekyll is a respectable member of society, he cannot fulfill his evil desires and he feels crushed by society’s judgmental ways and begins to ponder what life would be like if he were allowed to be different. He gives into his fascination and starts to experiment using the power of science and in turn concocts a potion which allows him to transform into Hyde, his evil “twin”. At first, he was satisfied, living this other side of himself, but then it turned into something horrific, causing him to trample a young girl and killing a completely innocent man. Jekyll states in his letter to Utterman “…I was still cursed with my duality of purpose…” (page 72). Stevenson concludes that man is not in fact a purely dual being, but a primitive being, tamed and civilized by the laws of society. Stevenson portrays Hyde in highly animalistic terms – short and hairy with gnarled hands and a horrific face. In contrast, Jekyll is described in the most gentlemanly terms - tall, refined, polite and honorable, with long elegant fingers and a handsome appearance. Thus, perhaps Jekyll's experiment reduces his being to its most basic form, in which evil runs freely without considering the constraints of society and civilization.

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

Within the same passage, Jekyll remarks that he became “conscious of a heady recklessness” and felt “more wicked, tenfold more wicked” (54). These subtle descriptions appear to be somewhat hidden as Dr. Jekyll’s euphoria overwhelming fills the page and, as a result, may fool the reader into believing that succumbing to certain desires is simply natural. However, Stevenson wittingly choses to add minute details to demonstrate that Jekyll is gradually, yet unknowingly, losing his “better half.” Through his joy, the author is able to reflect how humans can be unaware of the monstrous actions they are partaking in, bringing a sense of unease to the reader. By welcoming this monster, Stevenson is able to convey the notion that humans all have wicked desires hidden within. The moment one unleashes such desires out is the moment one loses their humanity.

The reason The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is vital to the rehabilitation of prisoners is because it teaches a powerful lesson on actions and there consequences. By Dr. Jekyll continually choosing to change into Mr. Hyde and feeding his evil side, he enabled Mr. Hyde to overpower him and become the more dominant personality. Which is shown on p. 72 when it states, “…it seemed only by a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the stimulation of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll.” Dr. Jekyll has now been confined to his home because at any moment he could change to his other self and would be without explanation to his friends and family. Now instead of using the drug to change into Mr. Hyde, he has to use it to stay in the form of Dr. Jekyll, his original self.

To begin with, Jekyll, in Stevenson’s book, lives behind a disguise for years trying to embrace his civilized-self and ignore his savage urges. The fear of his mask falling off at any moment pushes Jekyll to create Hyde as his only solution towards a sense of liberation. In Jekyll’s mind his identity is being ripped apart constantly making him and his alter ego, Hyde, perfect specimens, “of a double consciousness, of a ‘divided self’” (Letley 10). In his statement about the case, Jekyll declares

Stevenson's views on human nature are similar to that of The Bible, which consistently cites the life-long struggle Christians face between the flesh “evil” and the spirit “good”. Man can never be good because they are tainted by sin. Even Jesus says that only God is good in Mark 10:18 which reads, “‘Why do you call me good?' Jesus answered. 'No one is good--except God alone.' Jekyll is the archetypal example of this. Jekyll knows what his desires are but once he falls from grace by creating Hyde he is forced to grapple with his evil side until it kill him. Doctor Jekyll knew his inevitable demise was rapidly approaching because he pleads with Utterson asking him to “help [Hyde] for my sake, when I am no longer here” (39). Jekyll's actions were evil when he created his potion

Therefore, the audience of book can presume that Dr. Jekyll is familiar with the times, therefore subdue his natural, human needs in according with Victorian society. As a result, Jekyll, the ego, experience a tragedy of imbalance in which the morals, imposed by a Victorian superego, overwhelm the psyche. Fighting with the standards placed on humanity, he engages the help of science to physically extract the repressed human needs, or id, and from his haunted mind whose physical form is Hyde. Epitomizing Hyde as the consequence of society control, Robert Louis Stevenson strives to expose the devastation Victorian society creates on

Through Dr. Jekyll’s detailed statement, Stevenson unleashes a torrent of his philosophy upon mankind’s nature. After indulging in his evil side for a while, Jekyll finally decides to choose “the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes” (Stevenson 91), an example of one’s choice of who they truly are as a person. Through the loss of his dreams, the doctor

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde authored by Robert Luis Stevenson is one of the most famous dualistic novels in history. In this novel, we are able to respectively identify the two personalities of one Dr. Jekyll; the good and the evil. All humans are born with positive and negative characteristics, yet only one is prevalent. Dr. Jekyll is the ideal model for the “average” person, whose good side dominates the evil. Though one side of a person may be evident to society, the other still exists deep within the soul.

The theme of the existence of good and evil in every human being is prevalent throughout the story. Stevenson highlights this idea by describing Jekyll and Hyde’s disparity in terms of action and personality. Dr. Jekyll, unbeknownst of Utterson, had created a potion that gave him the power to split his good and evil self into two separate beings. However, it only created Hyde, the evil of the two without the creation of the good, angelic being. With the eventual discovery of this, Utterson was clarified of the plethora of mysteries that encumbered him.

In the fantastique that is Robert Louis Stevenson’s, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson writes of an idea where among human nature is a quality of duality in which the “good” and the “bad” coincide and “man is not truly one, but truly two.” (Stevenson 62) The main protagonist of the piece a Dr. Henry Jekyll embodies this idea with his scientific ambitions of dichotomizing these two aspects of human nature in order to purify himself. His fate in this way is a direct result of his desires to release himself of the evils that once influenced him as a child. As Mr. Hyde Jekyll’s so called troglodytic counterpart emerges, ironically he slowly begins to take control of the doctor's moral compass.

Jekyll is drawn to an experiment concerning human nature both by his own belief “that man is not truly one, but truly two” (104) and his desire to indulge once again in the wilder aspects of life without the judgement of society. Anxious to experience a pleasure not afforded to a man of his class and reputation, Jekyll sets about using science to prove his theory of an individual being both moral and immoral. Jekyll, through this experiment, allows himself to experience the pure evil he believes lies within each person without fear of facing consequences socially or monetarily for his actions. Despite the chaos and wickedness of his actions when left unchecked by a moral figure, Jekyll maintains his conscience to a degree that he is aware that he must be stopped. Jekyll is seen constantly conflicted by his decisions, at war with his decision to partake in his social experiment. Choosing to die rather than allow the destruction caused by said experiment to continue, Jekyll commits suicide as an act of heroism that conveniently also salvages his reputation(Singh and Chakrabarti). In order for Jekyll to stop Hyde’s unruly and destructive behavior, he must not only kill Hyde but himself as well in the process. Jekyll’s conscience maintains the idea that while good, and evil are equipotent, good conquers evil due to the ability of conscience to recognize times in which wrongdoing crosses an unspoken line and take necessary precautions