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Darkness In Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

850 Words4 Pages

“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” In this quote, Mark Twain is describing the basic human nature to keeping secrets. Everyone has secrets, whether good or bad. Society teaches that one must hide imperfections and secrets to be ‘socially acceptable.’ Those who do not hide their imperfections become outcast and are ridiculed by high society members. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson shows society's blind eye to secrets or evil through the motif of darkness. Stevenson uses darkness to represent the evilness in one's true self. “...and there was a man in the middle in, with a kind of black, sneering coolness-frightened too” (Stevenson 2). The author depicts the image …show more content…

“... and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fan-light…”( Stevenson 20). Dr. Jekyll hides the door in the dark, so no one would try to go inside. The door wearing “a great deal of wealth” proves that Dr. Jekyll is wealthy and a high society member. The reader eventually learns that behind the door was Dr. Jekyll’s darkest secret. If another high society member found out what was behind that door, Dr. Jekyll would become an outcast in society. “... Mr. Utterson behind a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the backend of evening…” (Stevenson 18). Stevenson uses the night and “hues of Twilight” and “the backend of evening” to represent the dark events that happen at night. Since members of society act perfectly throughout the day, their evil and true acts came out at night. Mr. Utterson discovers Dr. Jekyll's secret at night to show Dr. Jekyll’s evil side and to foreshadow dark events for Mr. Utterson and Dr. Jekyll. Overall, Stevenson uses the darkness to foreshadow morally wrong acts committed by members of the high society. Fear of society’s reaction sometimes convinces people to turn a blind eye to evil

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