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Good versus evil in dr jekyll and mr hyde
Jekyll and hyde summary essay
Good versus evil in dr jekyll and mr hyde
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Interests in math and science. Mr Hyde had developed a potion that allowed him to turn into Dr. Jekyll. Jekyll found a way to separate his good side from his darker side, by transforming himself into a monster free of consciences. But he later found that he was turning into more and more into Mr Hyde. He started turning into Mr. Hyde in random places, the transformations got worse and worse.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” because the story takes place in Victorian England we see that the characters have no room for expression of emotions or violence. Everything they do is secret, so the more Dr Jekyll is repressed, the more he wants to be Mr Hyde. The original characteristics of Henry Jekyll are reflected as “...life of effort, virtue, and control” (pg. 172) because, most of his life his vice activities were maintained a secret. According to Jekyll, when evil is separated into one body, one will not know right from wrong because there is no conscious in a being of complete evil which was Hyde for
“Hyde” is just Jekyll, having transformed his body into something unrecognizable". Jekyll does not make the potion to take away all evil away from himself. He created a potion that would allow himself to express his feelings without feeling guilt and facing any consequences effecting his respectable self. Dr. Jekyll in the novella is a respected professor and well known around the town. While Hyde on the other hand is almost the complete opposite.
He wants to do things for his pleasure, but will ultimately ruin his reputation. He turns into Hyde so he can do the pleasures he wants to do and when Jekyll is telling his statement on why he originally turned into Hyde, he says, “Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures;”(page 85). Jekyll has a good life but he finds it hard to stay happy because he can’t do the desires he gets. He doesn’t want to ruin his reputation by doing the things he wants to do and has to act
Dr. Jekyll is viewed as a smart man with a lot of knowledge, however, due to Jekyll not being satisfied with his life, he is determined to get more out of his live and is willing to do anything to fulfill his determination. Dr. Jekyll expresses this when he states, “[A] grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside… [t]here was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.” (Stevenson 57).
Dr. Jekyll is seemingly good, kind, and benevolent; while is not purely good he is a moral gentleman. He started his experiment so he could totally separate the bad and the good in himself into two separate beings. He did not succeed, however, for Dr. Jekyll is plagued by the feeling that he wants to become evil again, thus he wants to become Mr. Hyde. It is important to note that Mr. Hyde is completely evil; he has no goodness in him, in contrast to Dr. Jekyll who was a troubled mix. Mr. Hyde feels no remorse for any evil he has done and actually feels elated when he does commit a moral sin.
Jekyll and Mr.Hyde, it is discovered that in the end Jekyll and Hyde are the exact same person. Jekyll revealed that he liked being in Hyde’s body because he was able to get away with murder. He reveals that by saying “Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.” (Stevenson, 78) Jekyll is the perfect example of a Doctor who was considered to be well-respected, and passionate about his career.
Though Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ends abruptly, the final section, a letter from Dr. Jekyll, aptly concludes the story. The story is told through an outside perspective, with the strange happenings seeming a mysterious puzzle. In the final section, the disjointed events are explained and both the characters and the reader understand what transpired with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The conclusion of the story reveals the relation between the events the characters witness.
In other words, the criteria for good and evil are subjective; they are determined by the moral and cultural standards of societies. Consequently, because each person perceives good and evil differently, no single point of view is the absolute truth. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the dichotomy of good versus evil torments Dr. Jekyll. Confronted by his darkness and the pressure of social expectations, Dr. Jekyll invents a potent drug that transforms himself into Mr. Hyde, his malicious
The description Jekyll portrays upon taking the potion is illustrated to the reader as if he is being re-birthed but into a whole new perception of life. Physically, he is in such a pain because his bones are grinding, horrendous spirits are among him, and he is overcome with nausea. When it subsides, he is self-aware of his new mentality of wickedness (Stevenson 1710). Hyde sees himself in a mirror as the smaller, less robust side of Jekyll, and this is probable due to the facts of evolution because Jekyll, as a public figure, practiced more good in the world, as to Hyde, who is now getting to release his evil (Ferrer-Medina). Hyde, having an aggressive instinct, no moral or social standards, takes pleasure in violence ultimately leading to his own destruction (Singh).
One of the major ideas presented in Jekyll and Hyde is the need for both good and evil to live in coexistence within an individual’s conscience. Jekyll’s experiments prove that a balance between the two sides of nature is crucial to be content in the world. He realizes that the only reason he is able to be one of the two sides of his nature is because he
Through the character of Dr Jekyll character, we can see an unwillingness of entering the social order, which is made evident by Mr. Hyde, his direct opposite. At first he drinks the drug in order to enter into a realm that has no social mores, no laws from the father to follow. He assumes a Mr. Hyde, the new identity so as to test those boundaries. Through the “monster culture” we can establish that Dr Jekylls unconscious desire is personified in Mr. Hyde, and this will enable us to see Dr Jekyll as the illusion of reality and he was not whosever he claimed to be. He possessed unconscious desires which he had to let out.
The theme of this book is the struggle society deals with every day on whether do the right or wrong thing. Everybody struggles with their inner evil thoughts telling them to do the wrong thing and their conscience telling them to do the right thing. Dr. Jekyll deals with this struggle differently than most, he creates a new human being to try to and separate his his inner evil thoughts from his conscience. Otradovec gives his opinion on this by saying,"The divide between good and bad, as between Jekyll and Hyde respectively, should not be upheld so strictly. Jekyll is neither a good nor bad man, his only big sin is that he wants to go unpunished for everything and anything he does" (1).
Within the novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, there stands a strange case of good versus evil. However, this story has no great villain or even a valiant hero, it has only a man fighting with his vices and dark urges and desires, which grow darker, more morbid and perverted at the novel goes on. Then, as a means to free himself of such darkness and “evil,” the man creates an antidote or rather cocktail of drugs to help him in such matter. Only problem being, the cocktail separates his psyche in two and with the two sides released from each other. The darkness the bad is allowed to grow and lash out unattended and unblocked.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are different in their behaviors. Mr. Hyde can break out into a great flame of anger. This is evident because while a maid servant was getting ready for bed, she was staring out her window and saw what Mr. Hyde had done. Mr. Hyde was talking with someone and he was listening with an “ill-contained impatience,” and out of nowhere, Mr. Hyde broke out into a great flame of anger, stamping his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on, The maid servant described him as a madman. He then proceeded to break all of his victim’s bones and ended up killing him.
