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Theme Of Duality In Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

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Recommended: Dualism in dr jekyll and mr hyde

C3C Daniel Payne
Maj Lynn
English 211
5 May 2017
Red or Blue Pill
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a novel that describes the daring dilemma of a distinguished doctor and a disturbed, indescribable demon that denotes the dark desires of Dr. Jekyll. Throughout the story, decency is doubled with degradation; abandon with drawback; honesty with deceit. As such, Stevenson notions with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that dual nature not only of one man but also of society in general. that both good and evil resides within everyone and affirms that if one tries to deny their desires, rather than acknowledging them as a fragment of their entirety, said desires will likely manifest themselves in a magnified, overwhelming manner.
Dr. Jekyll and …show more content…

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, given Stevenson’s Scottish background, is that of the schism of Scotland. When read in this manner, the duality represents the national and linguistic dualities inherent in Scotland 's struggle with the separation between its own language and that of the English language. Also, Stevenson’s birthplace of Edinburgh consists of two distinct parts (Biography). The first, a historically medieval sector, in which the city’s less fortunate and shady constituents reside, is Mr. Hyde, if personified. The other, is that of the modern Georgian area which comprises of spacious streets, denotes decency—Dr. Jekyll’s …show more content…

In writing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson drew upon the theories of Charles Darwin, particularly his works on evolution in The Origins of Species and The Descent of Man. In it, Darwin attempts to answer whether man, just as all other living things, descended from an earlier, archaic form (Darwin 1). As such, when Richard Einfield states, “God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or Is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures…”,(Stevenson 19), Stevenson is utilizing the popular Victorian phrase—troglodyte—in a Darwinian fashion to emphasize the primitive nature that is Mr. Hyde. Comparing that to the, “large handsome face” of Dr. Jekyll allows Stevenson to apply the Victorian belief that physical properties had a direct correlation to a person’s tendencies

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