Comparing Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

Collin Thomas Mrs. Moore English II B9 March 28, 2024 How Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll are Both Examples of the Duality Between Good and Evil The duality of man refers to the idea that every person has both a good and evil side of themselves. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Stevenson were both very influential books of their time. The two are very similar because they each convey the idea of the duality of man. Both stories express that giving into immorality and allowing it to consume you only ends poorly. The transformation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a perfect example of evil corrupting someone's life. In the novel, Dr. Jekyll was put into internal turmoil by the two opposing

Jekyll doing the only thing he could to stop Hyde from being unleashed on the world permanently, killing himself, the ultimate poor ending. In a critical essay, author, Richard Dury, examines the bounds of identity within Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When discussing Dr. Jekyll’s identity Dury writes, “Henry Jekyll’s separate evil persona was eventually his downfall.” (Paragraph 13) Just as previously stated, the tragic ending of the life of Dr. Jekyll was due to his immoral second identity. All of this goes to show why Dr. Jekyll is a perfect example of uncontrolled evil going wrong. Similar to Stevenson’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde, it uses the topic of immoral identity to portray that nothing good comes from evil. In the story, the main character Dorian Gray starts out as an innocent young man blessed by his natural beauty. But after being introduced to Lord Henry, a cynical and contradictory man, Dorian began to change from virtuous to immoral. He became obsessed with his looks, and thanks to a wish he made on a portrait of himself, Dorian would remain beautiful and unchanged, while the portrait would show the way he truly looked physically and in

Both “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” use the topic of double identity to show how immorality can corrupt human beings. In the first novel, Dr. Jekyll is unable to control his evil urge, so he decides to create an independent form for the immoral part of his personality. Eventually, the evil becomes too powerful and Jekyll has to kill himself in order to rid the world of it. In the Second novel, Dorian Gray becomes obsessed with his own beauty and curses himself to be forever beautiful while a painting must take on his true image. Eventually Dorian's corrupt immoral behaviors catch up with him and he destroys the painting to get away from who he had become. But destroying the painting only led to his own death as he and the painting were connected. These two novels are very similar as they both talk about the ways in which evil is wrong and can destroy someone. They both also have their main characters kill themselves in the end as a way of showing that allowing evil to consume oneself will eventually lead to the destruction of