jekyll and hyde

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Sachin Visavadia 11KE

                

How does Stevenson present the conflict between good and evil in 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'?

In this piece of coursework, I will be presenting how Robert Louis Stevenson shows the conflicts between ‘good and evil’.

“The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” is a novel written by Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson was born on the 13th November 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The novel was written in the late 19th century and is set in Victorian London. The precise date as to which the novel was written was within 1886. Stevenson wished to create a novel that was based on the duality of personalities which was much depicted within plays and films at that time and tried to make it influential to the growth in understanding the subconscious mind.

Stevenson’s background was strict as he had a strong up bringing in the sense of being forced to do things to ensure that he remained civil and to be brought up into a respectable and courteous man. He had been forced by his father to do civil engineering and also had a few problems and conflicts with his father along the way. This relates to the good and evil shown within Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This could be conveyed as a case of his father leading him to the ‘correct’ path which he desires his son to achieve, being firm and sophisticated like an upstanding person, therefore portraying the likes of Dr Jekyll in which case is the ‘good’ side of Jekyll’s subconscious. Whereas Stevenson on the other hand, is heading towards the ‘wrong’ path, in which case he is becoming the dire and ill-mannered one which describes him with the same aura and ruthlessness as Mr Hyde who is the ‘evil’ side of Jekyll’s subconscious.

I believe that Stevenson at the time, felt as though he had these different sides to him due to his different emotions that he was going through because of his problems and wrote this novel in essence to explain and express his emotions.

For this reason, I believe that this is one of the key points in which Stevenson has presented the conflict between good and evil.

The genre of this novel is gothic horror and contains a slight amount of science fiction. Stevenson had been influenced by Charles Darwin’s many interesting theories on the topic of evolution and the different species, who in fact had written a book about his different theories, thoughts and suggestions which was called ‘Origin of the Species’.

Because of these many theories that Stevenson read upon and was influenced by, he added a creative scheme of changing a character to create an animal or “apelike” being which was not common and would in those days, be discriminated immediately within the public and society due to physiognomy. This would help to focus on specifically on Mr Hyde’s appearance to ensure that it portrays Stevenson and Mr Hyde like some sort of feral and uncultivated animal or beast that has some form of deformity and inhumanity. This would be the perfect case for presenting good and evil in the novel as the ‘apelike’ creature, who is known and portrayed as none other than the ‘evil’ within the novel is the relentless Mr Hyde, and Dr Jekyll who is the well-mannered, educated and respected being as the ‘good’ within the novel.

This shows conflict between good and evil as it is one person that these two different sides are engulfed within and because of this; it will create immense conflicts between personalities as each side tries to fight and prevail over the other to remain within control over the being.

The book was written in the Victorian times and in those days there existed two types of classes. These were the lower class citizens and the upper class citizens. As you may have already realised, upper class people were respected and had something honourable against their name and had something to uphold, whereas lower class citizens had no morals and had no wealth to their name and were poor and usually uneducated. Within this Victorian period, many of the citizens strongly believed in sins and punishment. This created a large conflict between good and evil as if you committed a crime or any law-breaking of any kind, you will be punished. Also in the time of this highly orthodox period, Victorian’s believed that if a person was ugly in appearance or inhumane in some way, it displays how ugly their hearts and feelings were and is an external and physical reflection of their inner self. This term has come to be known as physiognomy. It is based upon this belief that the study and judgment of a person’s outer appearance exposes their real nature. It is because of this principle that, the citizens judged every person on their looks and decided what was expected of them immediately based upon what they saw. In Hyde’s case, as the citizens had never seen anything that looked like Hyde before, they pre-determined that he was an awful man or some sort of monster that was ‘evil’ and had no heart or human emotions.

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A different novel that is related to ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ and has some similarities is a novel called ‘Frankenstein’ and was written by a woman named Mary Shelley in the year 1818. The tales of these two novels are similar as both are known for conducting some sort of unorthodox, scientific modification to a human being or using human body parts. Both novels contain scientists who abuse their creative power, immense knowledge and theories to mess with science and defy the laws of nature. The only dissimilarity between the novels is that, Frankenstein is a monster that ...

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