What picture of Hyde does Robert Louis Stevenson create in the readers mind?

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What picture of Hyde does Robert Louis Stevenson create in the readers mind?

The story of ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ is about a man who experiments on himself. In this story, he was trying to separate the two natures of himself and this was the good side and the bad side. The experiment started going wrong when he woke up as Mr. Hyde and yet ha hadn’t drunk the potion. Little by little, we see that the bad side of Dr Jekyll was slowly been taken over by Mr. Hyde. When the bad side of him finally took over, that is when Dr. Jekyll finally decided to kill himself.

We try to find out how Victorian people thought about good and evil and how people were created. We looked at a painting which was painted before that time but still reflects traditional Christian views of heaven and hell as well as good and evil.

When wee look at the picture, we see that in heaven the people there seem to worship their god in a more peaceful and calm way. In heaven, there are very few people and this suggests that it’s easier to be bad than good. That’s why there are fewer people in heaven.

However, in hell, we see that there are more people and the place is overcrowded. This overcrowding suggests that it’s easier to go to hell than to go to heaven. The people in hell seem to look semi-human because they seem to be half human and half animal. We also see this semi-human idea when Mr. Hyde was described as being hardly human. We see Mr. Hyde’s animal side when he often snarled when someone was talking to him. Snarling is also associated with snakes. So this half human half animal behavior really gives us the readers a clear picture of Mr. Hydes behavior.

When we go back to the picture of heaven and hell, we see that in hell, there is clearly no love and we see people’s violent nature when they are constantly scratching and killing each other. This picture relates to Mr. Hydes violent behavior when he cold bloodedly killed an old man in the Carew incident. If the Victorians had witnessed the killing, they could have thought that Mr. Hyde was creature from hell. We as the audience would realize that Mr. Hyde was a cold blooded murderer.

We also see that the people in hell seem to be worshiping desperately and we see this by the way they are lifting their hands and worshipping. Robert Louis was brought up believing this traditional view of heaven and hell.

In Victorian times, most people believed in the biblical teaching of the creation of the world which state that God created the world in six days. They were told that these teachings were good and in a way they believed that god was the center of the universe. However, Charles Darwin proposed that the human species originated from simpler forms (cells) of life and had evolved directly from monkeys.

We examined two cartoons, one of them illustrated heaven and hell and the other illustrated the Darwin theory of evolution. The picture with the Darwin theory of evolution shows a man and a gorilla at a party. Both of them seem to be well dressed but the Victorian in the picture is looking at the gorilla in a shocked way. In this picture, Charles Darwin was trying to illustrate that the human species originated from the apes. The Victorians however laughed at this theory simply because they believed in the biblical teaching of how God created the world. The Victorian in the picture seems very frightened of this ape because it’s bigger and more powerful than the human. Charles Darwin also illustrated that, although human originated form apes, we still have an animal side in our selves for example; we still are as aggressive as animals, especially when we lose our temper. The Victorians were very frightened of their animal side and they disguised it in high quality clothes. The clothing that the ape is wearing shows that human beings are able to disguise their animal side.

In the second picture we see Charles Darwin sitting with a monkey and staring at a mirror. We can see that Darwin was suggesting that were more of monkeys because we can see the similarities in their faces. They also have the same bodies. Although we humans are similar to monkeys, Darwin illustrated the main difference between us and monkeys and that is we have a bigger brain than monkeys. Darwin drafted out this theory because it was meant to make the Victorians believe in the theory of evolution. The Victorians still didn’t believe in this theory because they were brought up believing in the biblical teaching of how God created the world.      

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Actions or behavior of Mr. Hyde.

It is interesting that Robert Louis Stevenson uses images of hell and animals to describe Hyde. This would have made a strong impression on the Victorians. The first incident when we see Mr. Hyde is at the accident (when he knocked over a girl).

Robert Louis used the words ‘trampled’ to describe how Mr. Hyde acted as soon as he knocked over the girl. The word ‘trampled’ suggests that Mr. Hyde acted as though he wanted to hurt the girl. We as the audience suddenly realize ...

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