In Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Stevenson restricts this battle between good and evil to within the body and mind of one individual. Where Golding sets up two warring factions who fight out the battle on an island, Stevenson sets up conflict between the two personality traits within the one person and although this seems to be an isolated battle it is surely a fight that takes place in all of us.
Golding’s use of symbolism is very evident in this novel. Everything represents something else. The group itself represents a worldwide society. It is a microcosm of normal society. We witness the group degenerate from normality into tribal warfare over a short period of time. The island itself is there to emphasize the fact that laws and government cannot reach them. The children themselves were chosen above, adolescents or even adults because they have not yet been conditioned fully by society and therefore they use their instincts more than anything else. It almost shows what man would be like without rules, and how quickly people change and challenge for power. Ralph is used to symbolise law and order, he constantly makes sensible decisions based on rational thought. The Conch is the symbol of that authority and is used to summon the group and allow them to speak at the meetings. “We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They’ll come when they hear us___” “Ralph smiled and held up the conch for silence. Listen everybody.” This is the same as our system now where the House of Commons has a mace as its symbol and it is always present when Parliament is in session. The fading colour of the conch is used to show the diminishing power of Ralph and the decline of his authority until finally it breaks and the group slip into anarchy. “ The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.”
Jack represents that anarchy but he did not have the integrity to keep the beast at bay. The beast is the evil that resides within man but the children are too young to realise this with the possible exception of Simon and therefore it becomes a living creature in their minds.
In Lord of the Flies there are many bad (evil) and many good things. The evil things are represented by; the beast, the Lord of the Flies (the pigs head), which, as it decays, represents the decay in the society. Jack, Rodger and the island itself are all manifestations of evil. The good things are Ralph the leader and defender of the norm, Piggy who is the most intelligent boy in the group and his glasses represent the power of science and intellectual endeavour, they are the key to the fire and therefore also represent hope. When they are stolen by Jack in the raid it is an indication that the savages have taken control and the balance of power has shifted. “ They didn’t take the conch. I know. They came for something else. Ralph __ what am I going to do.” “The chief (Jack) led them, trotting steadily, exulting in his achievement. He was chief now in truth; and he made stabbing motions with his spear. From his left hand dangled Piggy’s broken glasses.” Simon is mature for his age, a thinker, maybe even religious. Golding uses these things to show good and evil.
The beast is a prime example of evil. It is not real; it is just a figment of the boy’s imagination. The beast is actually inside the characters. The beast is the bad side of man. The beast is also used to show what other characters are in terms of good and evil. When the beast is a topic in conversation, the evil characters like Jack say that it is real and that only he can stop it. Ralph however completely denies its existence “He felt himself facing something ungraspable”. He is trying to keep everyone happy. Jack is using the beast as a chance to show Ralph as a weak person. Simon, who has the most profound view for such a young person has realised that the beast is actually in man. “ ‘What I mean is… Maybe it’s only in us.’… Simon became inarticulate in his efforts to express mankind’s essential illness.” Simon comes out as being the best character in whole story. Piggy’s intellect also realises that the beast is probably not real when he says “I know there isn’t no beast – not with claws and all that, I mean – but I know there isn’t no fear either…. Unless - …. We get frightened of people.”
It is fear that is the key to all evil and it is how you deal with that fear that determines the type of world you live in. Both authors deal with this insomuch as Golding shows what happens if you let fear get out of control. He does this by contrasting Jack and Ralph in how they run their two groups. Jack rules by fear but is constantly challenged by Ralph right up to the end. Stevenson however shows Dr Jekyll trying to control the fear within him and in order to defeat it he eventually makes the ultimate sacrifice by taking his own life. Is this just a metaphor for a person suffering from a mental illness i.e. depression and when they can no longer take what they have become they end it all.
Lord of the flies is a book set on an island with no adults but a large group of children. They elect a leader and to begin with have a functioning group. But the lack of authority in the group leads to arguments, fights and even death. Anger and hatred is spread among the characters and the evil in man is presented through their actions. Humans are just another species. The only thing, which prevents us from killing and doing what we want, is the firm hand of authority. On the island there are only children, not a single child can dominate over others. As soon as the adult arrives at the end of the novel they revert from animals back to little boys. But the adult recognises what has happened when he says, “I should have thought that a pack of British boys would have been able to put up a better show than that.” The use of the word “pack” again indicates they were behaving like animals.
The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a book set in Victorian London. In the novel Stevenson goes out of his way to establish links between the urban landscape of Victorian London and the dark events surrounding Hyde. Dr Jekyll lived in a well appointed house, which Stevenson describes as having “ a great air of wealth and comfort”. By contrast his laboratory is described as “a certain sinister block of building…(which) bore in every feature the marks of profound and sordid negligence.” By using nightmarish imagery to describe the dark narrow streets of London Stevenson builds up the evilness of Hyde’s character, in complete opposition to that of Dr Jekyll.
Dr Jekyll is a very popular man, in high society who takes a special drink and it turns him into everything he’s not allowed to be. He turns into the Mr Hyde character that goes around killing, attacking and doing things, which would not be allowed in his day-to-day life. The novel certainly paints Hyde as animalistic – he is a hairy and ugly creature, who conducts himself on instinct rather than reason. Hyde’s ugly appearance is reflected in the other novel when Jack and his followers paint their faces to look more frightening.
In the novel Dr Jekyll believes that “man is not truly one, but truly two, beings” in one body; an “angel” and “fiend” battling each other for supremacy. He produces a potion, which he hopes will separate each of the beings within his character. However the Hyde character becomes the dominant character, leaving the reader to consider where the “angel” character within Dr Jekyll goes at the end of the book. When all else fails sometimes death is the only release but Jekyll had not tried everything, he could have sought treatment. If this story is about mental illness then often sufferers resort to suicide, as they can see no way out but is it just the fear of being found out that you have a problem.
Stevenson clearly depicts Hyde as a creature of great evil with countless vices. In the book the reader is told of the death of the small female child and the gentle and much beloved old man. Both are ruthless, immoral and depraved acts of extreme cruelty against mankind, highlighting the evilness of Hyde’s character. Almost unbelievably Hyde appears to get a great deal of pleasure out of committing violent acts against innocent human beings, he is totally immoral, basking in his breach of the law, fully aware of the moral laws of society.
Stevenson uses more direct examples of evil, the killings, the disfigurement, the darkness, and the sordid background. These are in line with events that were common at the time. Parts of London, Edinburgh and other big cities were dangerous places with dangerous people. Think of Jack the Ripper, the closeness of accommodation with dark alleyways, which was a breeding ground for evil. Using the problems of the day Stevenson uses his ability as a writer to enhance, exaggerate and generally paint a very sordid picture of the environment in which his story is set. Golding does the same but in not such a direct manner. The breakdown of the society on the island and the persecution of one group of people is also a reflection of the breakdown in the society in Germany in the 1930’s when the novel is set.
In conclusion both stories centre around the theme of good verses evil but the ways in which this is shown are different. They both show that good and evil exist and the struggle to keep evil at bay or for it to escape as the case maybe. The worrying thing about both stories is that once evil has been released, like Pandora’s box, it is difficult to recapture and all that remains is hope. Hope is present in both stories, in one the hope of rescue in the other the hope of an antidote. Although the endings are not conclusive in either book it is evil that seems to dominate but in the end it is defeated albeit in Jekyll case by his own sacrifice. Is this the case in today’s society, we are fighting that battle as a society and also within ourselves, evil seems to have the upper hand on many occasions, we will have to wait to see the outcome and what sacrifices we will have to make to succeed.
