Jekyll and Hyde. In this essay I will be trying to explore how Stevenson explores good and evil in the novella.

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Stevenson’s strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde an immensely popular book for it’s time. Stevenson explores good and evil in the way that man has a conscience of both good and evil. I think he is trying to say that man’s conscience is his most important part of man; this is because it tells us what is right and wrong. It separates us from animals so in this essay I will be trying to explore how Stevenson explores good and evil in the novella.

Stevenson has two main characters in this book: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who one could argue is the evil mirror of the other. Hyde is the evil character in Stevenson’s book; he represents the dark desires of Jekyll full evil side. Hyde at the start of the novella first shows evil side when he tramples over a young girl, “for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground.” This shows that Hyde is totally evil and has no guilt or regret for what he had done. Stevenson shows us this, to show the dark side of humanity and how dangerous we can be. Stevenson also adds a crucial bit to suggest evil is within everyone showing Hyde’s terror and the evil he gives off while around other people. “I saw that sawbones turned sick and white with the desire to kill him.” This shows us that Hyde is giving off an evil feeling to everyone around him firstly suggesting that capability for evil actions is within us all, but also showing that Stevenson explores evil a lot through Hyde.

Having no conscience to lead Hyde in the write direction causes him to do the wrong thing, never knowing what is right. It shows that he has no conscience and that he is lower down the evolutionary chain (an animal) when Stevenson describes him as a “beast.” This shows us that Hyde doesn’t know what he is doing and that he can’t help himself from being an animal. Also the word “deformity” shows that Hyde is not human. In the whole novella Mr. Utterson is probably the only character we can say is good in the novella.    

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Hyde first appearance and description also shows that he is evil, by saying “he was perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running.” This symbolizes the evil within him.

Stevenson chooses to show the extent of evil when he is making the reader think about how Hyde is getting more and more powerful. Hyde kills an MP Sir Danvers Carew to show that the result of Jekyll using Hyde more often results in an increase of evil in his soul suggesting that once we give ...

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