Jekyll and Hyde, Evil

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Stephanie Wicken 10Cy3

Analyse the representation of good and evil in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a novella written, and set, in Victorian London, during a unique era containing its own brand of hypocrisy and breeding a plethora of double-lives. The author, Robert Louis Stevenson, was no stranger to the double way of life himself. Therefore it is of no surprise that the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s main theme is good versus evil. Stevenson doesn’t only show evil through Mr. Hyde, but also, to an extent, through Jekyll as he is just as much to blame for his double life as Hyde.

Dr. Jekyll’s motivation to create his doppelganger way of life is not explored until the final chapter where Jekyll concedes that he is not as good a Victorian gentleman as he first seems, as the Victorian ideal was contradictory and impossible to conform to. This is why he began experimenting with drugs, so he could separate the sides of his personality and create a different body so he could conduct the misdeeds he so greatly desires without detection. “If each could be but housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable”. Jekyll finally succeeded in concocting a drug that separated good and evil, and thus Hyde was born. Stevenson uses Hyde to explore the concept of good and evil in many ways including their physical appearance. The physical differences between the two are a metaphor for what happens when the Victorians took drugs; Hyde is mentioned to be comparatively younger than Jekyll, certainly wilder, and completely care free – “liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures;” This quote implies a whimsical sense to Hyde; however, from other descriptions of Hyde, the audience know this is far from the truth.

Drugs were at the forefront of the Victorians’ minds, not only due to their recreational value, but also within the many medical breakthroughs of the time. Stevenson himself took drugs for medical reasons as he suffered from tuberculosis and experienced for himself some of their undesirable side effects. Thus the idea that the moral orientation changes or is influenced by drugs, was introduced into the story.

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The strange case of dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is not told by one person the whole way through, but through a number of different narratives. The plot is mainly followed through Mr. Utterson’s point of view which shows us a view of Hyde’s evil, through good, respectable eyes. The narrators are all ‘good’ characters; mostly Mr. Utterson, but also Dr. Lanyon; then finally Jekyll himself. Jekyll is arguably an evil character during certain phases in the story; which is why, I believe, that he only narrates at the end. His letter is written as his most ‘good’ and selfless ...

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