How does Stevenson present the conflict between good and evil in ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’? Essay

Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a novella by Robert Louis Stevenson set in dainty London and written in 1886. It fecal matter be said that Stevenson in additionk brains directly from his throw fuck offs when creating the plot, as m either a nonher(prenominal) aspects of the novella can be comp ard directly to his life. Stevenson grew up in Edinburgh, which had the same dramatic contrast in the midst of the rich and the poor stances as the London in which Jekyll and Hyde is set and it is clear that he was influenced by the things he saw when going ab disc e very(prenominal) vagabond his every day life the divide amid wealth and poverty.The idea of the unhappily conflicted mortalality of Jekyll could easily be based upon him ego the young Stevenson aspired to become a writer precisely this profession was looked down on by parlia custodytary law as writers were feeln as leading im lesson and luxuriant lifestyles. His p atomic number 18nts certainly disapproved of his choice an d inadequacyed him to pursue a to a greater extent respect competent career. Stevenson decided to organize a law degree, save did non stop writing, thereby creating for himself a double life.The genre of the book is mediaeval horror and could also be said to hasten elements of science fiction. One clear influence would be Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, written in 1818. This, similar Jekyll and Hyde, has re adjustations of the worrying developments in science and compromising piety as well as controversial comments on society. A nonher source of inspiration is the 1859 book by Charles Darwin Origin of the Species in which Darwin looks in depth at the ideas of evolution. This book was decomposeicularly shocking since it bring uped that each(prenominal) benevolent beings were once animals, which were believed to not have souls. Such an byrageous statement clearly contradicted the views of the religious majority.The period in which Jekyll and Hyde was written is important because of the rigid morals held by most people in Victorian England. in that respect were clear divides between classes, where the rich and the poor were considered as almost comp allowe different races. This meant that there was a great complete of hypocrisy respected unmarried men were often encouraged to meet with prostitutes further the women themselves were considered as disgustingly immoral. People had prejudices against anybody who looked strange or different, strongly adhering to the idea of physiognomy that a individuals somebodyality could be defined by their go forthance. This was also a succession where hu publicy hot breakthroughs were being made in science and people were beginning to worry nigh the moral side of what was being done, and fearing that scientists were attempting to concern themselves with divine matters. This meant that scientists were often not very well thought of.The main theme in Jekyll and Hyde is the divide of good and shabbiness and th e duality of worldly concernkind. This was particularly relevant in the society of the time as several characters were beginning to emerge that had appeared respectable members of society and turned out to be less(prenominal) than perfect. The most famous example of this is Jack the Ripper, who was believed to be a surgeon or at least have detailed anatomical knowledge. Other examples are Burke and Hare, two infamous men who interchange stolen bo dissects and thence victims that they themselves had murdered to be used in medical research. This was highly disturbing, particularly since their main leaf node Dr Knox must have known that the bodies they were receiving did not come from moral sources. Another example in the society of the time was Deacon Brodie, a respected cabinet performr who was also a skilled burglar.Jekyll and Hyde tells the recital of wealthy desex Henry Jekyll, whose ideas that a human being had both good and wickedness indoors them led him to attempting t o split up a persons personality. His experiment worked, however not tout ensemble as he would have wanted, as he had managed to create and physically transform into a incarnation of his own malignance who he dubbed Edward Hyde.He soon sight that the reckless lack of morals and force of Hyde were highly addictive and he found himself going about under the guise of his other self and committing atrocities. Eventually he realised that he was being rapidly taken over by Hyde and was unavailing to give him up. He was also running out of the drug that enabled him to transform back into Jekyll, and he signalizeed to his horror that he could not recreate the original mixture. He wrote an account of what had egested to his hotshot, Gabriel Utterson, and then committed felo-de-se to kill both himself and Hyde.The different elements of the plot fit to blendher seamlessly, and at times this appears a footling too coincidental such as a letter to Utterson being found upon the murdered Danvers Carew and Utterson so easily being able to find out that Jekyll and Hyde had such similar handwriting through his work Guest.Instead of using Jekyll as the storyteller, Stevenson uses an embedded narrative by having Utterson as the main cashier. This means that we see the story from the perspective of somebody who is not directly involved and therefore means that the reader does not see the replete(p) righteousness until the end when everything is explained from the viewpoint of the doctor Lanyon and then Jekyll himself. This adds realism to the story, as separately narrator is a tout ensemble different character. For example, Lanyons description of events is practically to a greater extent factual and Jekylls uses intelligent metaphors and detailed imagery. The narrative is achronological, meaning that the story is not portrayed in chronological order. Rather, we experience the statement with Utterson scratch, and then are alter in on events that happened previou sly by Lanyon, and finally told all that had happened by Jekyll, starting from long before we were starting introduced into the plot. This means that we are almost plunged into the narrative in media res as we start off from the middle of the story.While Lanyon and Jekyll give us clear first person accounts, Utterson is described in the third person, and this helps us to understand the flaws of his personality and therefore understand him more. It gives us a less biased perspective as we are enabled to make up our own opinions as well as learning Uttersons views on what is happening. Stevenson wants us to trust Utterson as a person so that we will trust his judgment, giving him a dull and controlled personality so that his perceptions will appear more likely and lead us to making false conclusions so that the actual outcome of the tale is a complete shock to us as well as to Utterson. His narrative makes the story more believable than if we had been told everything directly by Jek yll and also builds up tension and mystery as the lawyer goes out of his panache to piece together the trouble his promoter is in as well as the compose of the elusive Mr. Hyde.The character that the whole novella is circled around is Dr Henry Jekyll, who is first presented to us as a wealthy man of good taste. A small doubt to his character is regularize forward as he is described as something of a slyish cast perhaps but then insisting that he was every mark of capacity and kindness. Since Utterson had already suggested to us that Jekyll is in some kind of trouble, we are more likely to feel sorry for him. This is further increased by Jekylls apparent terror when Utterson mentions Hyde. He therefore appears as a moderately weak person who is being manipulated by Hyde.We learn a lot more about him when we read his first person account. Jekylls flaws become more self-evident and we realise that he is not as he originally appeared. His language shows us that he is extremely in telligent and insightful, and idealistic enough to believe that his reckless experiments could change mankind for the better. He does appear fairly weak in character, as he clearly enjoyed the new tones that being Hyde allowed him. He says that he mat up younger, lighter, happier in body within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current bemused sensual images running like a mill race in my fancy, a solution out of the bonds of obligation, and unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.Clearly, he found it refreshing to be able to take the body of a younger and fitter man, particularly one who was not governed by moral boundaries. He continued to take the potion even though he knew that his new self was purely abuse until he could not stop, which shows that he was acting for himself now instead of continuing his research. He keeps himself free from vice by not accepting any responsibility for Hydes crimes, insisting it was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was g uilty. Therefore, he completely disassociates his other half from himself. He appeared to feel remorse for the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, but then decided that it was alone Hydes fault and all that he had to do was use this as an excuse for no thirster becoming Hyde, which shows him to be a hypocrite.But he also becomes distanced from his original self, referring to Jekyll in the first person and seeing the kisser of the doctor as just as much of a mask as becoming Hyde, talking about the two halves of himself as equals scorn Hyde being completely malignant composition Jekyll was a composite. This would mean that evil was the greatest force and he had inadvertently moved toward the worse as he feared after the first transformation. He actually considers staying as Hyde for the rest of his life when forced to make a choice, but decides that he prefers to be Jekyll, well-liked and a man of reputation. Despite being taken over almost entirely by Hyde, Jekyll still has the streng th to end his own life and thereby kill Hyde.Jekyll speaks in a respectful manner when addressing others, but we do not really learn much about him before the first person account. Here, it is clear that he is a man of excellent study and with a wide imagination. His language is flowing and descriptive, using metaphors such as the Babylonian finger on the wall and analysing ideas in psychology that were beyond his time, in fact also beyond Stevensons.To the reader, Jekyll represents the average man. He is curious and ambitious, and often feels conflicted from the strains of his life. He is tempted by pleasure, and makes the wrong decisions due to this. Also, he appears as quite high-flown and egotistical, recovering that his clever tricks can keep him out of trouble and that he is completely safe. This leads him to his own downfall.Hyde is the physical embodiment of the evil element of mankind. He is utterly immoral and feels absolutely no regret for any of the dissolute crimes he commits, in fact he is delighted by them. For example when he kills Danvers Carew, he mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow. His appearance is very important as everybody who meets him instantly dislikes him although they do not quite know how. He is described as pale and dwarfish he gave an slump of deformity without any nameable malformation. Jekyll supposes that Hydes small stature is due to him only being a part of a whole the personification of one aspect of Jekylls character.The immediate hatred he provokes when he comes into contacts with others shows how he has an aura of profligacy that can be sensed even when there is no author to dislike him. For example, when Lanyon met him for the first time knowing nothing about him, he says that he too was filled with the same irrational hatred, telling Utterson that he was surprised by the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. In fact, the only person not repulsed by Hyde is Jekyll himse lf, whose first response to his other half was a confine of welcome, although in time he grows to truly hate him.Hyde does not care about anybody, but he clearly cares about his own welfare as he takes measures to protect himself from capture after committing crimes, and is terrified of death. This is clear when Jekyll says that Hyde commits temporary suicide by returning to Jekylls body and safety. Hyde does not hate Jekyll in himself, but hates being imprisoned inside him and that Jekyll has the strength to cage him and destroy him. He cannot hurt Jekyll without smart himself, so resorts to showing his loathing of Jekyll by playing childish spiteful tricks on him.Jekyll describes Hyde as ape-like and troglodytic, suggesting that he is not only inhuman but pre-human. This takes ideas from the theory of evolution by Darwin, and could mean that Hyde is a grade back in evolution and therefore fuelled by natural instincts rather than carefully considered thought. His emotions are v ery extreme he is filled with a mixture of rage, joy and fear. He tends to act on nervous impulse by striking out when he is enraged without any thought of the consequences. This idea of Hyde being more of a beast than a human being also plays with the ideas of religious Victorians that animals did not have souls and would not go to heaven.Hyde converses with others with a cold sarcastic politeness, speaking courteously enough unless angered. He is not ab initio rude when forced into a conversation with Utterson, but may have recognised him as a friend of Jekyll who it would not be wise to draw attention from. His temper flares very easily, and he can do anything when this happens. He is in a furious mood when Jekyll lets him takes control again, and this leads to his attack on Danvers Carew. When he is caught in public without his potion, he strikes a woman in the face for attempting to talk with him, and is close to assaulting the device driver of a cab taking him to safety. He uses sharp plosives such as blasted by a prodigy and using short sentences which gives the impression of fast-breaking and more violent speech.Gabriel Utterson is the first character introduced to the reader. He is described as being slow in sentiment, lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable, which makes him sound to be a very uninteresting person but adds a positive adjective so that he isnt perceived as having a bad personality. Stevenson introduces him first to add realism to the impossible plot and to get the reader to place their trust in him as a person, not just as a narrator.He is reserved and doesnt like to get involved, proven when he said I let my brother go to the devil his own way. However, this original philosophy is reverted when he is told about Hyde and realises that his close friend Jekyll must be in trouble. Utterson ends up being the one most involved in Jekylls problems, actively seeking out Hyde and looking for answers. He does not like to gossip, a nd agrees with Enfield that speaking less about things is a good idea. Utterson appears to think that reputation is of great importance and he barely changes his stiff system even during emergencies such as Carews death.Utterson appears to be well-liked and trustable in general, as both Jekyll and Lanyon regard him as a good friend and it is said that hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer. Utterson does not make friends easily, but his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time he makes friends for life. This shows with how he worries about Jekyll.The effect Hyde has on such a boring man is remarkable, as Utterson is filled with fear and curiosity despite not having even met the man yet. He begins to suffer from lack of sleep as he ponders his friends predicament, picturing Hyde as some kind of demon with a terrible power over Jekyll. This shows that even though Utterson is not a very imaginative man, he is conjuring up images of this unknown monster which frighten him. He seems to be a brave man when searching for and then facing Hyde, especially as he begins to learn what the man is capable of, which proves him to be quite a selfless person when it comes to helping his friends despite what he had originally said about keeping out of other peoples business.Dr Hastie Lanyon is a mutual friend of Jekyll and Utterson, and his help is required by Hyde in order to transform back into Jekyll when he transforms in Regents position without his potion. The shock of seeing the depraved Hyde physically becoming his friend Jekyll causes Lanyon to become very ill and he dies soon after. Lanyon is described as a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentle-man the first time he is shown to the reader, but by the time of his death he had become pale his body-build had fallen away he was visibly balder and older which shows the effects of discovering Jekylls secret.Lanyon is a doctor of empirical science and clearly disapproves of Jekylls wild ideas. He claims that Jekyll began to go wrong, wrong in judicial decision and calls his work unscientific balderdash. This implies that Jekyll had told Lanyon some of his ideas, and the disagreement over this had separated the two friends. Hyde taunts Lanyon about this when about to take the potion to turn back into Jekyll, saying you have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors. Despite Hyde playing on the rift between them, Jekyll still greatly respects Lanyon and apparently the reaction of his friend affected him a lot more than Carews murder.Just as Hyde represents evil in the story, Lanyon represents good. He is jovial, kind, and although he had a grudge against Jekyll due to the unusual experiments he is carrying out, it seems likely that he would in due course exculpate him. He does still consider Jekyll his friend, despite often referring to him as inreasonable and apparently not believe him. The knowledge of exactly what his friend had become destroyed him completely, and he became too afraid to speak of it or even to sleep. He tells Utterson that he knows that he is dying and seems to have resigned himself to the fact, but says that he will die incredulous as the horrific scene he had witnessed defied all scientific logic that the sensible man could ever consider. He cannot cope with the impossible reality of what he has seen.Jekylls butler Poole is of a dispirit class than the other characters and consequently uses non-standard English. However, Stevenson contradicts the common assumption that common servants were ignorant and foolish by making Poole, although uneducated, a fairly clever character. Poole has picked up on the problems his master is having, and has begun to try and work out what is going on. He has realised that Hyde is in the brook in Jekylls place, and attempts to argue his intuition against Uttersons sad logic, with Poole turning out to be right. Poole turns out to be a useful character, helping bring Utterson t o discover the truth.Another critique of societys views is the character Enfield, described as a well-known man about town, who is of upper class and yet appears to be not exactly perfect. Enfield tells Utterson that he was coming category from some place at the end of the world, about three oclock in the morning, casually implying that he was visiting somewhere unsuitable a popular pastime that the wealthy glossed over.Stevenson uses a great deal of language techniques to put across the sinister tale of Jekyll and Hyde. He starts the novel with a description of the narrator Utterson and his friend Enfield, using humour when he tells the reader about the apparent incompatibility between the men and how they insisted on going on walks that neither of them appeared to enjoy. This is effective because Enfields story is a good way to lead into the main tale, and we are thereby introduced to a few crucial elements of the story. For example, the back door which leads to Jekylls laborator y, although this isnt revealed until later on. It appears to ruin the appearance of the street, a blemish on an aesthetically pleasing area, order of payment in unsavoury characters such as the homeless and rowdy children.The whole idea of the two doors is a clever metaphor for the theme of good against evil, as Hyde could enter through the decrepit back of the house and emerge from the front as Jekyll. Stevenson employs many similar metaphors, such as the use of physiognomy to suggest Hydes malevolence and by describing Lanyon, making him sound a kind and cheerful man. Lanyon also has a shock of hair prematurely white, the colour white carrying with it connotations of purity and strengthening his character. Hydes visage is hidden by a mask when moving around Jekylls house, symbolising Jekylls thirst to keep his devil hidden away. Another technique used is the image of angry citizens crowding around the cold, sneering Hyde, each one filled with the desire to kill him Hydes unnatur al air of evil turning the normally docile women into harpies that had to be held back lest they attack him. This works well as it opposes the sexual practice roles in society.One of the most effective tools Stevenson uses is the weather. The first instance of this is during Hydes first appearance it takes place in early morning where everywhere is eerily quiet and dark. It is also night-time when Danvers Carew is killed, this time a full moon which often symbolises unearthly happenings, although the maid who had witnessed the murder contradicts this idea by saying that she had never felt more at peace with the world. When Utterson takes the policeman to Hydes house in Soho, it is the first fog of the season, relevant to the previous events since this was Hydes first murder and his character was becoming worse and worse in the nerve center of the reader. The idea of fog creates very vivid imagery, and could be taken as a metaphor for the shrouded truth about Hyde.The mist is brok en in some places by sunlight, which could symbolise the hope still odd that hasnt yet been swallowed by darkness. This whole scene has been personified the fog almost appearing like a creature battling with the wind that was aggressively attempting to drive it away. This scene is suitably supernatural Utterson describes it as a rule of some city in a nightmare. This pathetic fallacy is subverted when Jekyll is in Regents Park and transforms into Hyde it was a blissful, sunny day with all the frost having melted away and sweet with Spring odours. This does not seem like a setting for any villainy, but this is where Hyde appears again, which shows that evil can now happen in beautiful places.The pace of the story depends upon who is telling it, but it is generally slow paced. However, this changes during scenes of action, which builds up tension. The sentences are complex during descriptions, often in a few parts with colons or semi-colons to break them up, but during faster scenes this changes into short sentences with alliteration and plosives and usually more dialogue. This builds the pace of the text and engages the reader.Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has very universal themes of the good and evil elements of every human being, which means that it just as relevant today as it was when it was written, even if the points put across are less controversial. Stevenson deals with theories of subconscious thought, seen when Jekyll becomes Hyde in his sleep which would suggest that humans are more mentally conscious when asleep, an idea which still hasnt been completely worked out today. This was very advanced as nobody had yet begun to develop these ideas, until 1901 when Freud published a thesis on the unconscious mind.It is clear in the story that Jekyll quickly grows to hate his creation, but is unable to give it up. This can easily be seen as analogous to modern addictions such as drugs and alcohol, which can seem wonderful in the beginning and then quickly take ov er your life as Hyde did until it seems impossible to stop. The same patterns can be traced between the feelings from substance abuse and Jekylls addiction to the feelings and emotions he felt being Hyde, which shows that this is still very relevant in todays society.Like Jekyll, modern scientists are being criticized for their research, such as re-create and work into genetics. Some people argue that they are meddling with Gods work, and even those who are not religious may say that this kind of research is immoral and wrong, or that it could lead to problems like diseases if our whole natural system is changed artificially. Even if this does not happen, sometimes human beings can go too far with what they think is right. The thirst for success can often blind people to what they actually want to achieve, for example a scientist workings on perfecting human cloning may be purely working for the glory of the discovery rather than improving the world by his findings. This is human arrogance, which was Jekylls weakness.I think that the message in Jekyll and Hyde is that although evil dwells naturally within everybody, it can be overcome and that we all have the strength to overcome it. Jekylls pride caused his inner demons to take on a life of their own in Hyde, and although it cost him his own life, Jekylls morals and conscience were the victor in the end. Stevenson was trying to put forward the idea that humans are not either good or evil, nor are we sane or insane, but we are all the same to being with, built up of different emotions, thoughts and feeling which can lead us one way or another depending on our upbringing, choices, experiences and actions. So although everybody has a potential for evil, they also have a potential for good, and power to overcome evil.