Comparing Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the tale of Gabriel Utterson looking into the strange circumstances surrounding his beloved friend, Jekyll, and a mysterious man named Hyde. The Picture of Dorian Gray follows Dorian as he begins as a pure man, turned wicked through the temptations of pleasure. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the conflict of identity that stems from the underlying desires that we have as humans can lead to problematic moral decisions. It is revealed that Mr. Hyde is another form of Dr. Jekyll in the same body but completely embodying his immoral desires. Dr. Jekyll describes this phenomenon that stems from “all human beings” being “commingled out of good and evil.” He describes his alternate self as taking on all his “pure evil.” Human beings all have the intrinsic nature of not only a justified side but a wicked side as well.

Jekyll further identifies his “two characters” as being separated physically into “two appearances” with Hyde being “wholly evil” and the other being the “old Henry Jekyll.” Jekyll has the innate feelings of good and bad split into two different characters with a clear distinction between the disgusting and vulgar man and his original polite gentlemanly self. In Lawrence Trudeua’s criticism, a theme that is explored is the “idea of man” that is “divided” between his “self-serving pleasures” and the desire to live a “moral and sociable existence.” Our nature as humans includes the struggle between giving into the dark desires of our flesh and the yearning for a good and moral life. Dr. Jekyll suffers the consequences of losing control and sacrificing himself in the process of indulging in his desires as Mr. Hyde. Dorian Gray falls into the temptation of Henry to blindly pursue the pleasures of human