Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde Essay

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a novel that expresses many themes and ideas in precise detail. A psychoanalyst named Sigmund Freud expressed the idea of a three-part human psyche. These parts are summarized into seeking pleasure at any cost, condemning oneself to fit into society and the adoption of morals and feelings. Robert Louis Stevenson, although the publication of his book occurred years before Freud's idea developed, conveys these three parts of human psyche in his novel. Exposed in Dr. Jekyll’s narrative is his obsession to separate the good and evil within people in order to make them wholly one or the other. “Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other” (Stevenson 50). Jekyll never seemed to think about the costs of separating good and evil before his experiment proved successful. Evil expels into one personality of Jekyll at a force that is too much for him to handle, eventually overpowering any good left over. Dr. Jekyll, determined to follow through with his science, failed to recognize the consequences and how they would affect others. This characteristic of young Jekyll portrays to readers what Freud called the id, to seek pleasure at any cost without a

Jekyll repressed the content of his science for the purpose of fitting in with the rest of society. “‘I am painfully situated, Utterson: my position is a very strange—a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.’” (Stevenson 15). Since Jekyll proved infatuated by the idea of duality he could have told people around him the truth when asked about Hyde. For the fear of becoming an outcast in society Jekyll refrained from doing so, keeping his studies and any related actions a secret. This relates to the ego, as expressed in Freud’s view of the human psyche. The ego relates to man’s tendency to repress their desires in order to get along in