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Comparing Dr. Jekyll And Dorian Gray

Decent Essays

Selfish desire, and an obsession with its fulfillment can consume one’s mindset creating an absence of reality. The intention to use selfish desire as a pivotal purpose in life can alter the course of events encountered along the way. Consumption with fulfilling one’s selfish demands and satisfying immediate desires masks the recognition of the effect of those actions beyond the present. This blindness to the implications of one’s actions creates a downward spiral towards an undesirable fate. The only way to influence the reversal of this fate is by being forced to confront it. In Everyman, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the authors demonstrate The inability …show more content…

Through the comparison of the characters of Everyman, Dr. Jekyll, and Dorian Gray the authors reveal that, a lifestyle according to the fulfillment of selfish demands hinders the flourishing of the human person and by diminishing one’s moral character prevents the confrontation of one’s fate. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson demonstrates how one’s selfish intentions to achieve a desired state shape the journey in reaching that goal by causing one’s blindness to reality. Dr. Jekyll sought a scientific solution to the dissatisfaction he felt in his life through his discovery of the potion, which enabled him to transform into Hyde. This extent to which he was willing to go to fulfill his intentions was caused by his blindness to reality. In Dr. Jekyll’s closing statement, he describes how his transformation into Hyde made him feel initially. He says, “ There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new, and from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current disordered sensual images running like a mill race in my fancy” (Stevenson 44). Jekyll’s purpose for transforming into Hyde stems from his desire to attain

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