Jekyll & Hyde Symbolism Of Mr Hyde

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Symbolism Of Mr Hyde

A strange, repugnant man who looks faintly human. Mr Hyde is violent and cruel, and everyone who sees him describes him as ugly and deformed, yet no one can say exactly why. Language itself seems to fail in trying to describe Mr Hyde's appearance, he seems to be a creature which is beyond rationality. Mr Hyde is Dr Jekyll's darker side nevertheless throughout the novel Robert Louis Stevenson uses the character of Mr Hyde as a tool to symbolise a number of messages and it is not until very late in the story that we actually find out that he is in fact Dr Jekyll. Until the end of the novel, the two persona's seem nothing alike, the well-liked, respectable doctor and the hideous, 'juggernaut' Hyde are almost opposite in type and personality. Stevenson uses this marked contrast to make his main point that every human being contains opposite forces within him or her, an alter ego that hides behind the persons more polite nature. Consequently, the greatest power of the novel is to be had when the two characters of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are considered as one and are shown to be the two contrasting characters of one individual.

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Dr Jekyll largely appears as a moral and decent man, enjoying a reputation as a courteous and friendly man, a man who seems to be. Although at first it seems to be Dr Jekyll who is the more dominant character out of the two, as the novel gradually goes on in the later few chapters Mr Hyde becomes the more dominant one of the two until it gets to a point at which even Dr Jekyll's closest friend cannot get hold of him. This dominance of Mr Hyde as a threat within Dr Jekyll holds various messages for what ...

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