Bryan Stevenson: A Brief Biography

The Gothic fiction novel “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886, is a novel about a man torn by the desire to separate the good and evil inside people. The plot beholds a scientist who finds a way to literally separate his good from his evil by drinking a potion. The plot picks up on the Victorian hypocrisy that crippled people into being society’s idea of ‘good’ and the shallow nature of the Victorians and how they judged character by appearance. At this particular era classes still reigned, so this meant that reputation was still more important than anything, and if being ‘respectable’ meant suppressing inner desires or altering the person you were and having to live with that, then

Dr Lanyon is portrayed as being innocent in the novel. The fact that Lanyon refers to Jekyll’s scientific ideas as “balderdash” and “too fanciful” suggests that these ideas are too bizarre and out there, this perhaps may be suggesting that Lanyon is a very almost “by the book” sort of person and the fact that these “fanciful” ideas proposed by Jekyll causes him to refrain from being friends suggests his moral behaviour and perhaps his innocence for wanting to stay out of this “devilish” mans “balderdash”. Similarly, the quote, “I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more glad to get away”, this demonstrates that Lanyon has seen this alto-ego and would rather die than live with this. Perhaps Stevenson is emphasising Lanyon’s

When a family member dies, they usually leave behind a will, property, or money to give to a loved one. In joint families, situations like these provoke arguments amongst the family members; all for the greed of wealth. Similarly, in the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson, David has been out finding his place in the world. He returns, as a man, to claim his rightful inheritance from his father’s death. For the greed of wealth, Davis’s uncle gets him kidnapped. On his journey to get back his rights, David meets Alan and they become best friends. David, the archetypal youth, and Alan, the dashing rouge, both exemplify character archetypes through their speech and actions.

At a different point in each of our lives, we understand the benefit of family and friend systems. Kids begin playing the sports their parents suggested; they wear the same style of clothing as their siblings, or continue their academics in hopes of pleasing their relatives. In the book The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, the author Wes Moore examines his life in comparison to another boy raised in the same conditions with the same name in similar Baltimore neighborhoods. The author grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House Fellow and business leader while the other Wes Moore became a convicted murderer and is now serving a life sentence in prison. While most ponder what the true cause for the difference in these two men’s life, I believe the primary reason was a lack of a strong family support system.

Robert Louis Stevenson was born into an upper middle class family that never had an issue of money. Stevenson was a sickly child, but this was no problem because the family was able to

During law school, he got an internship with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (Stevenson 5-7), which was inspirational and made law school seem much more relevant and interesting. After he graduated, he “went back to the Deep South to represent the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned” (Stevenson 17). He was committed to providing social justice for everyone despite the corruption. Throughout his career, he worked with many different types of minorities, all of whom were misjudged and treated harshly by society and the criminal justice system. He represented children, who had grown up in terrible circumstances, and then were prosecuted as adults. He represented women who couldn’t afford access to healthcare, and then got charged with murder when they miscarried their baby. He also worked with mentally ill people who never got the help that they needed (Stevenson 17). Stevenson realized that mass incarceration is not the right answer. Almost everyone has to capacity to be a functioning member of society if they are given the chance. Locking people up has become the answer for almost any problem a person may have. As a society, we would rather imprison someone than get them the help that they need. Stevenson fought for social justice for these people. He did this work out of compassion, duty, and most importantly,

The first connection I made to lecture and the text book came early in Just Mercy when Stevenson told about his background an upbringing. Stevenson described southern coastal Delaware, a place you think of as a vacation destination on the Atlantic coast, based on his experience growing up.

Stevenson uses pathos to tell the people of her time the immense change that occurred in the 1920’s because of the new flappers. The flappers did not only change the way the 1920’s people lived, they affected us living in our time period now. Without the help of the flapper, women might still be seen as unequals. They started a revolution of change that is now seen as normalcy. Stevenson helps to prove the importance of this change through several rhetoric devices.

"...What impact did your father not being there have on your childhood?"(The "Other" Wes Moore -Part I: Fathers and Angels - pg. 4) This question is what connected me to the novel. The "author" Wes began the story of his and the "other " Wes's memories of their fathers. This explains how and why they grew up fatherless. Wes " the author" recalls only have two memories of his father one was when his father had a talk with him after he punched his sister Nikki and the other one was the day his father passed away. The "author" Wes father didn't choose to leave, unlike the "other Wes's father, which he never met until years later. I related to this chapter a lot, I too was raised by a single mother but my story is just a tad different. My family

People often believe that family is one of the most important things in the world. This is seen in the historical fiction novel, The Watsons Go To Birmingham, 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis when the Watson family take a trip to Birmingham, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Movement. The author uses symbolism to convey the message of family, during the Watson’s long road trip in their new car to Alabama.

The city of London proved to be the sole dominant location in the 1800’s during the Victorian era in this novel. As the story unfolds in the classic literature novel, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” written by Robert Louis Stevenson, the magnificent city of London becomes a darker and mysterious location. The powerful city of London embodied the freedom and solitude required for the antagonist of the story, Mr. Hyde to hide his wicked behavior from the society as a whole. According to the history of the Victorian age, “Traditional ways of life were fast being transformed into something perilously unstable and astonishingly new” (1049). The population in England was growing at an astounding rate, illustrating the transition

As the cities in the nineteenth century grew and expanded, more and more people moved from the countryside to said cities. With an increase in the size and population of the city a individual 's anonymity increased as well. Both the Paris Morgue and the novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written by Robert Lewis Stevenson portray the anonymity of modern city life. While middle class men often appreciated the anonymity of the city, because it allowed them to escape social class restrictions, they also feared some of the negative implications. The working class, on the other hand, might have enjoyed the new found entertainment options, however they also had to fear being victims of crime and ending as nameless corpses. Women, both from the middle class and working class, experienced more freedom through the entertainment and leisure time options available due to the anonymous character of the city.

Bryan Stevenson, human rights lawyer and founder of the Equal Rights Initiative (ERI), has been central to an ongoing project of the ERI to create markers for the lynching sites of African Americans. Its function is to “to create a mechanism for forcing people to talk more about slavery,” with the hope of confronting racial injustice within America through confronting our long history of abuse (Carp). Stevenson believes that any impetus to talk about slavery is vital to understanding why our society is shaped the way it is, and why we deal with the problems we do. I agree with Stevenson in that the identification of these sites is a beginning in our journey to uncover the truth of our past and our present, which for too long has been shielded from the American consciousness.

He dedicated his life to serve those who are in need the most and needs his Help. He opens an organization call the Equal Justice Initiative that is responsible for freeing or reducing the sentences of scores of wrongfully convicted individuals. Although, Stevenson faced a lot of problems, for example, the walter case where there were false evidence against him, Stevenson was still able to serve him justice. With Stevenson’s help many young kids, the falsely convicted and the ill were able to receive justice.

Stevenson ran in through the front door of his manor with Futility in tow. He quickly turned around and locked the door and pulled the curtains down. Sabastian and Jefffery came out of the basement looking cautiously alert through the sudden appearance of Stevenson and Futility, most noting Steve’s great distress. “Stevenson!,” yelled Sabastian. Stevenson ignored his brother and continued to run about the house, locking doors and closing curtains.