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 is seen performing scientific practice, attempting to achieve a goal which can be argued to exceed his mental capacity. Dr. Jekyll wished to remove his dark side, tampering with the duality of man. He expressed hatred towards is his darker side. It shows this in the quote “many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as i was guilty of;... I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame.”
Without the bad force, the good force can’t be present; therefore, the bad is within the good and vice-versa. The book presents Dr. Jekyll as a good and respectable man, but Dr. Jekyll hides his dark nature until the creation of Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll likes being nice and friendly, but he also has dark urges he wants to satisfy. Once he creates Hyde, he feels Hyde’s dark urges seeping into his mind, because his good intention and nature wasn’t able to keep his dark nature in check. Dr. Jekyll presents what is going inside his head in his statement.
“The man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground” (3). Mr. Hyde ran over a young girl late into the night without feeling any guilt. Robert Louis Stevenson shows the archetypal theme of good and evil exists in all people in the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. Good and evil exist in all people and we struggle with these two forces. This is shown through Jekyll because he is good with a little bad in him, this is also shown through Hyde, who is evil with some good, and it is lastly shown with the lab because it brings good and evil into Jekyll’s life.
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
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.
Lanyon Is More Evil Than Good In the gothic novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Lanyon is more evil than good. Mr. Utterson, a lawyer in nineteenth-century London, becomes invested in a strange individual, Mr. Hyde. With his bewildering behaviors and unsettling appearance, Mr. Utterson does not understand why Hyde would share a connection with the respected Dr. Jekyll. Therefore, he approaches their childhood friend, Dr. Lanyon, to learn more information about Mr. Hyde.
As Stevenson was fascinated by Darwin theory of evolution he decided to portray it in his work. Due to the fact that in Victorian times the idea of rationalism was popular and that people weren’t supposed to show their strong emotions their darker sides were repressed and The locked doors and curtained windows of Jekyll’s house form the imagery of a man locking away the truth that lurks inside; Jekyll turning into Hyde is a metaphor of what happens when the unconscious mind is revealed; the murder of Carew symbolizes the repressed mind striking out at the conscious mind. The whole narrative is about unpeeling the layers that hide the repressed desires inside Jekyll Stevenson also uses several narrative points of view to intensify the feeling of a frightening outsider. As Hyde is often narrated in a mysterious way through different characters perspectives which slowly reveals horror a feature used in gothics.
In the novel, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson explores the complexity of human nature. He uses characters and events in the novel to present his stance on the major theme: “man is not truly one, but truly two” (125). Branching from this major theme are many more specific views on the idea that human nature is divided into good and evil. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are two very different people who occupy the same body. Human beings struggle with good and evil and Stevenson goes to the extreme to to show this relationship.
So, perhaps Jekyll’s experiment reduces his being to its most basic form, in which evil runs freely without his reputation as Jekyll being tarnished at all. Jekyll and Hyde are not the only examples of duality in this novel. The city of London is also portrayed in contrasting terms as both a foggy, dreary and ‘nightmarish’ place, and a well kept, bustling center of commerce. Indeed, just as men have both positive and negative qualities, so does society.
Good and evil are a common way how people live their lives, this has been going on for decades. In Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde Robert louis Stevenson mystery novella physical description of Hyde and Jekyll to reflect good and evil. Hyde is portrayed as evil antagonist in the novel. Mr. Utterson asks what Hyde looks like and Enfeild struggles to tell him “ deformed somewhere and he gives a strong feeling of deformity”. When the doctor and girls family met Hyde they hated him and wanted to kill him.
Good and evil has never left, Evil has been around since 1885. Evil will always exist. However evil was different then. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the setting, the Victorian Era influences the characters actions in the novella.
Stevenson also warns readers of the all-consuming nature of evil. This is indisputably epitomised in the character os Dr. Jekyll as he succumbs to his “other self”, Hyde, and is unable to escape from the insidious nature of Hyde. Only death was able to relieve Dr. Jekyll of his immoral and “wicked” side (Stevenson 1689). Therefore, the text could be viewed as a 19th century social novel that allegorises the evils and immoral vices of
Good, however, is shown to overcome evil, by the actions and events taken and that had occurred within the novel. The "evil", Mr. Hyde, being born of good, the evil deeds only present while the novel 's "good," Dr. Jekyll is not, and the novel’s end, where Dr. Jekyll deciding to not let his darker half kill any longer and makes a decisive and sacrificial decision. All of these point to this concept that good prevails and triumphs evil no matter the cost and no matter the strength or power of evil whether it be an overwhelming gap or a tiny little crack. Dr. Jekyll was a good man and a good surgeon, doctor, and scientist, but he was not without his own vices and set of foreboding dark impulses. These he found a hassle to deal with and also big troubles.
