Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde Good Vs Evil

Good v. Evil, it’s way more than just a concept, it’s more of a lifelong struggle inside of you. What more could you do when evil is shown all around you? Many of us may see the struggle between good and evil in the people we come across everyday. Flawed individuals may be perceived as good but are bad in the eyes of someone else; it all comes down to how you see it. The exposure to things and memories you make help impact the good in you. In order to further evaluate the argument of how good can come out of evil and good can show up even when it’s not right in front of you, can be shown in both William Golding’s novel Lord of the flies and the Anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf. This essay asserts that,

Good and Evil in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

How Stevenson Explores the Nature of Good and Evil in the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Everybody has good and evil inside them. The good in you should always be in control because if you let your evil side out too much it will take control of you and change you, just like Hyde changed Jekyll.

Good versus Evil is an important concept. Evil sometimes overcomes our good but never exceeds good. The difference between evil and good is that good is an ability to have empathy and compassion towards other people. Evil is people who are selfish, self-absorbed and don’t have empathy towards others. Literature plays a vital role in developing concepts of good and evil and effectively portrays the morals of its time period. In the novels Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the authors explore the human nature of good and evil in men from different perspectives of Dracula, Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll.

In his novella "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", Robert Louis Stevenson explores the dual nature of Victorian man, and his link with an age of hypocrisy. Whilst writing the story he displays the people of the time and what happens behind closed doors. In Jekyll 's suicide note he makes the following observation " I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil." The underlying moral of this novella suggests that all people consist of good and evil, and that they possess the ability to control and acknowledge the darker side of them.

The world as we know it is constantly moving and changing; events occur that can affect people’s lives even if they are thousands of miles away. Whether or not these happenings are good or evil can shape one’s mindset and outlook on the actions they take themselves. Both have distinct strengths and weaknesses; however, the real question one must ask is which side of the spectrum is more capable of influencing humanity. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written by Robert Louis Stevenson, a wealthy and well-respected doctor by the name of Henry Jekyll, who believes that man is not one but two separate people, constructs a potion which unearths his inner evil (Mr. Edward Hyde), and in the end is engulfed by the strength of his malevolent persona.

Good and evil together, this is what the back of Robert Louis Stevenson's book, Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde says, it's also what I’ll be writing this essay about today. Throughout the book we see plenty of examples of the dual nature of good and evil. I’ll be giving some of my own examples from the book in my essay.

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.

The battle between good versus evil is a classic battle, and has been shown in many different texts in many different ways. Both Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” have an overarching theme of good versus evil; however, Stevenson has his characters choose evil, unlike Poe whose character slips into it, also, Stevenson shows the duality of good versus evil in two separate bodies, while Poe has the two sides of human nature inside a single body, although, in both stories the protagonists feel remorse for their actions. The choice between the two sides is a clear difference between the two stories.

Would you rather spend your entire life being good and caring about others, or would you rather be evil and care less about others and only care about yourself? In the novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written by Robert Louis Stevenson in the Victorian Era, also known as the era of pure good, which many people tend to behave with manners to be accepted in societies, but Stevenson wrote this story to demonstrate how we're all evil in some way and was probably the best way to act. Freud’s theory of human psyche is that we all have inner evil and it's up to us to choose if we wanna be id or superego. As for myself, I choose Id because being careless and rebellious can lead you to get what you desire, despite the consequences. For example, you can be a rude and violent person and get away with it, commit a murder and get away with it, care less about what people think about you, and show your true feelings about certain things can make you feel free.

The archetypal theme that good and evil exist in all humans, and we live our lives struggling with these two forces is represented in the novella The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. While all humans have both good and evil living inside of them, some can handle and cope with both parts, while others show one side of them too much. The characters in Stevenson’s novella cope with their good and evil in different ways. Dr. Jekyll uses his power of knowledge to extract the evil out of him and put it into a whole different person to represent the evil side of himself and becomes Mr. Hyde. Mr. Utterson, tends to release his good side more than the evil, trapping it inside of himself. Mr. Hyde himself only seems

“All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.” ( Robert Louis Stevenson 45)

Everyone loves the classic age-old battle of good vs. evil. Just watching until the very end to find out that good eventually prevails is arguably the most satisfying thing about the rivalry and why filmmakers as well as authors take on the theme so often. However, good vs. evil is also something that human beings simply cannot escape. As long as there is good in the world, there will be evil; also, as long as evil exists, there will be some good to stop it. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, he presents the reader with many different themes throughout. The main theme in Jekyll and Hyde is good vs. evil and the battle between the two. The second theme is repression and how repression affects the characters throughout the novel. Stevenson focuses on the battle between good and evil and the tendency to repress the true self in his classic work in order to emphasize that all people have within themselves these same struggles.

Throughout many works of literature, a prominent theme has been “Good vs. Evil';. Many authors base the plot of their novels around “good guys'; fighting the “villain';.Robert Louis Stevenson contrasts good and evil through many of the characters thathe creates.