Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde free essay sample

Pascarelli Mrs. Armstrong English 12 December 19, 2012 The Duality of Man During the Victorian Period, people did not believe in dualism and thought it was unacceptable. Robert Louis Stevenson brings the possibility of another self in one person to life in his creation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The quote â€Å"Man is not truly one, but truly two† (Stevenson 43), can be defined as every soul contains elements of both good and evil but one is always dominant. Both sides of an individual cannot be strong at the same time; therefore one side becomes stronger and takes over one’s body. Dr. Jekyll allows Hyde to dominate his personality and eventually he is unable to control Hyde as time proceeds. The duality of the brain during the nineteenth century explains that the left and right hemispheres each had its own function. The right hemisphere was supposedly dominated in the brains of the insane while the left hemisphere was associated with civilization. By discussing such themes as the hypocrisy of society, and the suppression of passion he proves that Stevenson proposes that we must feed our evil souls as well as the good. In the Victorian society you would be judged for the things you did or wanted to do, so you would just keep them private; but you would have had no problem condemning another person for these same social ‘crimes’. This novel also explores the idea of atavism which was big at the time; this is the idea of a person being an evolutionary throwback. In my essay I will be writing about how Robert Louis Stevenson explores the duality in human nature. The plot actually starts depicting a man, Utterson, who has been completely twisted by the very nature of the way the Victorian’s were in a very understated way, because even in his home he wasn’t comfortable to be who he was†¦He had to carry on being the person people expected him to be. ‘He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages. ’ This is saying that he was very strict with himself even in the comfort of his own home, and that he would have to drink gin just to kill off the taste for the drink he actually preferred; why he thought this necessary? I don’t think it really matters, Stevenson just wrote this to show this side of people’s characters to give us the first real insight into how people were acting back then. Jekyll states in the novel ‘man is not truly one, but two. ’ This tells us that he is wise to the fact that men as a whole were just showing half of who they were. When Jekyll states this he means it physically, but Stevenson wrote it as a symbolic statement to the fact that man was fake and not just this one side he would portray to the world. Jekyll was intent on separating the two sides he talks about, so that he does not have to feel shame in being a bad person. He uses specific words and phrases like ‘concealing my pleasures’ ‘guilty’ and ‘degradation. ’ These feelings of remorse only exist due to the social confines of the Victorian society that exists at the time. Had Jekyll been placed into a society of which morals did not exist or were not hugely important to the ethics of life, much like today’s modern culture, then he would not have felt the need to get away from the person he felt he had to be. But because of the pressure to conform to respectable normality; Jekyll cracked under the pressure. He thought that freeing himself from his inner demon would bring him happiness. ‘I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of those elements. ’ This quotation shows us Jekyll’s passion bordering on obsession to be free from the moral obligations society posed. Stevenson wrote this to show the grave longing everyone possessed to create someone they could be. When Jekyll takes the potion he physically and emotionally transforms to embody that of Hyde. A cry followed; [him taking the potion] he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with infected eyes, gasping with open mouth. ’ I think the obscurity and pain that Jekyll/Hyde goes through upon taking the potion is symbolic for the reluctance to change back and become what he once was. Eventually due to the inaccuracy of his ‘unscienti fic balderdash’ (as spoken by Lanyon) something goes wrong and his changes from Jekyll to Hyde become more irrepressible, ‘My blood was changed into something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde. ’ He lacks the power or strength to stop these changes. Hyde seems to perform the metamorphosis without warning or consent. I believe this to be significant to the fact that Hyde is becoming stronger and less willing to do as dictated, and because he, the inner demon, has been exercised at such a severe extent he had become a bigger part of Jekyll and so containing the inner beast becomes harder. Stevenson writes ‘the powers of Hyde seemed to grow with the sickliness of Jekyll. I do not think he wrote this meaning a literal sickness but was instead talking about the mental deterioration of Jekyll. The distinction of the unplanned and unwelcome changes between Jekyll and Hyde is symbolic to the fact that as the lines forming the distinction of the personality of Hyde and Jekyll began to merge thus so did the transition. The huge importance of the different physicality of Jekyll and Hyde is illustrative to the completely different characters and the way they are as humans. In Victorian society you could be judged as a rapist, murderer, crook or just plainly evil simply by the way you looked. Stevenson played on this, which surprises me, as he seemed so desperate to shame the way the Victorian’s were with the particular social/historical context†¦Yet he seems very willing to play with the judgmental scientific ideology which is exactly; you can judge a book by it’s cover, in fact you can very probably dictate exactly what the book is likely to say just by the cover. The description written by Stevenson was ‘Mr Hyde was pale and dwarfish†¦impression of deformity†¦displeasing smile†¦Unknown disgust loathing and fear with which Mr Utterson regarded him’ ‘hardly human†¦troglodytic†¦foul soul†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ all these paint an very marking picture of what an awful person this man must be. He also gets a reference to Satan ‘If ever I saw Satan signature upon a face, it would be that of your new friend. ’ I think this reference is very important; because I believe Hyde to be a metaphor for the Satan we each have to fight everyday. Jekyll we know to be completely physically contrasting and this is important as it plays with the social historical context. Mr Jekyll was a plain looking man, nothing hugely appealing nor particularly repulsive†¦And this is similar to that of his personality. Mr Hyde however is hugely ugly and very repulsive thus again connecting with his character; and this is exactly what the Victorian’s believed. The novel’s two endings have a certain connotation that again plays with the idea of duality. We are not just given the ending from the perspective from one person, but two. But, more obviously, this was important for Stevenson to write so that the reader could be given a full idea of what actually happened. Because at this point Utterson was still not yet fully aware of the absolutes in the story, but with the ending Jekyll writes himself we are given the complete ending. One thing I notice is significant to the ending of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was that in the end Dr Jekyll dies. I think Stevenson wrote it this way as a sort of metaphorical warning. Some of the suppression in the Victorian era was important, and still is today. Conforming to society’s standards can sometimes be a good thing, without morals we would have no real way of being well rounded people; everything would be chaos as few people would actually have taken the decision to be good. Morals were set in place by religion and this is good because as Stevenson has written and told us everyone possesses the inner demon that Jekyll let out, but if it is not repressed nor handled correctly it can grow to substantially dangerous amounts that would eventually end up killing you (emotionally and in this case literally). Jekyll’s inner demon was Hyde, no morals, no conscience, no remorse and he ended up being killed along with the last remaining piece of good that was possessed by Jekyll or Hyde. Jekyll’s last good deed to the earth was dying because if he had not then he would have deteriorated to the state where there was no longer a Jekyll and a Hyde but just one evil being, who lacks any kind of substance that is needed to be a ‘normal’ functioning human being. One branch of philosophy insists that human beings are ‘dual creatures’. By this is meant the animalistic side of a human being, being separate from man’s unique ability of rational thinking. This duality in humans is the not quite so obvious physical meaning in Robert Louis Stevenson’s story ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. ’ The much more obvious, emotional meaning is that which makes this book a fantastic read. Stevenson puts across this duality in every human mainly through Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde. The story also demonstrates how an innocent curiosity about our darker side of our nature can get out of hand. In all of us there is a seed of evil. Anyone having read the book will know that Henry Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde when having consumed a special potion. The brew awakens a dormant or hidden character; this is emphasized by a physical mutation. This physical mutation from a tall, slim, man of older age to a, younger, stronger, smaller and hairier build has an important imagery to it. The contrast between the suave, distinguished gentleman and the impulsive ‘animal’ is notable. Dr. Jekyll’s clothes do not fit Mr. Hyde; they are too small for him. Hyde therefore personifies the idea that the primitive evil is smaller, and that it can be controlled. Dr. Jekyll is a socially acceptable, repressed individual, who still has a dark side. He can hide it though. Hyde on the other hand is the completely liberated. Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde don’t represent ‘good’ and ‘evil’. The experiment described in Jekyll’s letter didn’t turn out as it was intended, which was to fully separate good and evil, with a character embodying each side. Instead, Hyde seems to personify the pure evil side of human nature. But Jekyll on the other hand, is not of pure good nature, he represents the control one has, or lack thereof, over primitive spontaneous passions and desires. Dr. Jekyll thus symbolizes the idea of repression in a respectable individual. Hyde is completely liberated from Jekyll’s repression through the potion. He is the boundless entity that gives in to all desires, this means Hyde is the one symbolic, however evil, character of this book that represents true liberation in a person. I also think that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this to show us that no one can be truly liberated and if they were it would surely be a bad thing. Hyde is not purely evil either, after having ‘trampled calmly’ a little girl, Hyde himself speaks in a sincere manner and offers compensation for his acts ‘ If you choose to make capital out of this accident†¦I am naturally helpless. No gentleman but wishes to avoid a scene†¦Name your figure. ’ If Hyde had of been truly evil, then he would have just walked away from the scene; but naturally, however insincere, he felt the need to stop and compensate for his actions. In that way, both sides of Jekyll are both good and evil. The two characters also don’t make a divide between love and hate. Hyde does seem to have self-love; he dedicates himself to his egotistic desires, and in this sense seems to fulfil his need for both love and hate. Jekyll is seems more subdued, he feels both of these emotions, but has control over them. He does this in order to conform to society. One could say that the underlying basis of this duality in Jekyll is his desire to be closer to what he feels from his ‘lesser’ self. He can’t behave the way he wants to because of the risk of the loss of his high social status, one of a respectable gentleman. In the disguise of Hyde, he can lurk around Soho and other dark, red-light districts, where he can fulfil his sinister desires, without putting his important reputation at risk. In the last chapter Henry Jekyll claims to have control over Hyde. He says he can be rid of him when he chooses to. He is addicted to his other side nonetheless. Near the end, the reader learns that his excursions as Mr. Hyde are more and more frequent. This addiction and need to succumb to his primitive self develops into an almost complete loss of control. This is conveyed when Utterson and Enfield decide to go visit Jekyll, who has decided to close himself off completely, even from his friends and servants. Jekyll seems to be very weak at that time, reflecting his ‘weaknesses’ on controlling Hyde. He has to make his leave, because of what seems to be a ‘Hyde impulse’ he is trying to hide. He can control this impulse fully, so he has to hide away from his friends. One could also assume that the duality in Stevenson’s novel is about a curiosity of, or the need to discover one’s primitive impulsive side. If we look at Utterson’s character, there is also this need to know about Hyde. When Mr. Enfield tells about Hyde, Utterson develops on obsession in knowing more about the mysterious dark character. He goes as far as being tempted ‘to disregard the prohibition’ of reading Dr. Lanyon’s narrative, which is only meant to be read if Dr. Henry Jekyll died or disappeared. In this way he also illustrates the existence of duality in every individual. He does restrain himself to following through his desire though, which shows that one has control over their animalistic side. The moral of this interesting story is that which many Christians would be rather familiar with, possibly even more applicable to Victorian culture than the modern day one we live in: â€Å"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil†. One needs to be in control of their darker side of human nature, and to stop this seed of evil from growing larger. Perhaps, the moral is that we cannot control evil once unleashed. Jekyll tries to ‘use’ Hyde to give in to his temptations without damaging his social position. This spirals out of control. The cost of Jekyll’s curiosity turned out to be a deadly reversal of dominance.