"Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde"
'How does Robert Louis Stevenson explore the duality of human nature in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?'
My coursework is based on the book "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" written by Robert Louis Stevenson. I will be answering the following question 'How does Robert Louis Stevenson explore the duality of human nature in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?'
The book is about duality, this means two sides, two personalities. But everyone has a good side and an evil side. Duality means that there is one person, but has two sides, a bit like two personalities. You can have a kind heart, and help people by day, and then become mean and horrible at night. Stevenson chose to do this subject because it reminds him of his own life. When he was seventeen years of age, studying at Edinburgh University, and he was a respected man by day, and debauched by night. In the novel, Jekyll says, "man is not truly one, but truly two." What he means is that everyone, no matter how kind, polite, or even how mean you are, you still have an evil and a good side.
In the Victorian times, Christians believed that good and evil were emphasized by stories of angels and devils. Angels are good, like helping you through illness and heart breaks (good side), and the devils are bad, they cause illness and mischief over the world.
The science theory from Charles Darwin threatened the Christians belief that God created us in his own image by telling them that we were descended from apes. Charles Darwin came to the conclusion with reasons, and one reason was because human's are very polite, nature loving, and caring, and apes are crazy, and love getting into trouble. So basically, we have a 'human' side, and an 'ape' side. This is what frightened the Victorians because all their life, they have believed that God had created them, and then suddenly, Darwin have this 'crazy' theory saying that they were descended from apes.
The story's based on Jekyll and Hyde, two personalities, but with one person. Jekyll wants to bring the bad side out of him, and at the same time, have his appearance changed so that no one would recognize him, and so that no one would describe as a cruel and defiant man. A quote from the story, Jekyll says, 'And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and the shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial was among my members.' The quote tells ...
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The story's based on Jekyll and Hyde, two personalities, but with one person. Jekyll wants to bring the bad side out of him, and at the same time, have his appearance changed so that no one would recognize him, and so that no one would describe as a cruel and defiant man. A quote from the story, Jekyll says, 'And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental, reacted and the shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial was among my members.' The quote tells us that he is making the potion because he sees this as an experiment, but then becomes more than that. As he starts to drink the potion more frequently, the potion starts to take over his body, so that he begins to lose control over the change, and this is not what Jekyll wanted.
The characters in the book believe that he has gone crazy and over board with his experiment. Dr. Hastie Lanyon was a friend of Jekyll, whom he had worked with until he found out about the Hyde experiment; he stopped working with him because he thought that Jekyll was taking his experiments too far.
Looking at Jekyll's narrative in the final chapter, he explains why he took the potion, and what made him want to bring that bad side out, even though he had a good life where he was.
When Jekyll takes the potion, 'There 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 mill race in my fancy, a solution of bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.' This quote suggests that when he takes the potion, he feels like a new man, and happier in another body. He uses strong description to describe how he feels about his 'new' body. 'Indescribably' is a word which Jekyll uses which means that he wanted to be someone else, not in his own body.
In the story, there are two main characters, Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde. Jekyll is a respected man and doctor. Jekyll is well known in the community because of his good nature and kindness to the world and his patients and very understanding. Some may describe him as a 'strange man, dwarfish, and deformed'. Hyde is the evil side of Jekyll. He's violent and hurts anyone who gets in his way. He does not talk to anyone, and he does not like to show his face. When Stevenson describes the two men, he uses opposite language, 'a strange man, dwarfish, and deformed', describes Hyde, and 'a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness- you could see by his looks that he cherished for Utterson a sincere and warm affection' is a description Jekyll. The two descriptions describe them in different ways, Jekyll is smooth-faced, and Hyde is dwarfish and deformed explaining that the potion has not only changed his good to evil, but changed his appearance in more ways than one.
Looking at the setting in the book, when Jekyll is good, his house is 'still occupied entire; 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,' is describing the house to be cozy in Jekyll's presents, but in Hyde's presents, the house is 'dark like the back-end of evening; and would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wrenths'. The description of the house through two different people explains a lot about the characters, Jekyll is warm and kind, and Hyde is cold and cruel. The role of both of the men are different, Jekyll is a doctor, and a scientist whom everyone comes to for help, and Hyde is a man who no one wants to come near, he destroys anything or anyone who gets in his way, no matter how small or tall.
The book itself has two endings, at the end of chapter 8, Utterson finds Hyde's dead body, which shows that with no Hyde, the story is dead, and the other ending is after Jekyll's narrative about why he chose to take the potion, and how it changed his life for the better, but then got worst. This means that he only wanted to have fun, but not in a way where he is then criticized for doing something that he feels exciting. His life got worst because it stared off ok where he was able to express his feelings, and do things he couldn't of dome before, and then when Hyde started to take over his body, he felt that he wasn't able to enjoy his new life because he couldn't have the excitement no more of being able to control his life and personality.
Jekyll makes the potion because he describes people 'man is not truly one, but truly two'. He says this because everyone has two personalities, good side, and a bad side. He's a respected doctor, and doesn't want to ruin his reputation by doing things that he should 'not' do like partying and hurting people. So he therefore takes the potion to have a different appearance so that no one would link the men together.
Jade Brown
English
