“People’s personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.”-Francois de La Rochefoucauld. This quote, having been stated in the 1600’s, shows that there was a recognition of different aspects of one person’s personality, even before multiple personalities were studied in the medical world. In 1886, a groundbreaking novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, explored the idea of multiple personalities. In the novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the two main characters could not be any different. Dr. Henry Jekyll is a well respected doctor, and is well established in the community. He lives in a beautiful mansion, is nicely dressed. He is known for his decency and charitable works. Jekyll did admit to having a dark side, which he was not proud of. He began to experiment with ways to release his dark side from himself. This experimentation would eventually lead to his friends and colleagues disassociating themselves from him. When a longtime friend and medical colleague, Dr. Lanyon was asked about his current relationship with Dr. Jekyll, he stated, "But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake's sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly …show more content…
Edward Hyde is described as a small, plainly dressed man with violent and cruel tendencies. Almost everyone who sees him describes him as being deformed in some way, but cannot give a definite reason why. When Mr. Enfield, a relative of Dr. Jekyll’s lawyer, first set eyes on Mr. Hyde, his reaction was much the same. “There is something wrong with Hyde’s appearance,” Enfield says. “I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point”(Stevenson, Ch.1,
Imagine having two people living in one body. One might be more powerful than the other. For Dr. Jekyll, he is a well-respected man around town, but wants a change in his life. Mr. Hyde is Dr. Jekyll’s other half that does many crimes throughout the story. There is a mystery the entire time until the end. In the novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, written by Robert Louis Stevenson; Dr. Jekyll changes into Mr. Hyde by drinking a potion that he has made himself. Mr. Hyde has many traits that differ from Dr. Jekyll, including being ugly, wicked, and ape-like.
Dr. Jekyll is benevolent and pleasant in his social interactions. He attempts to cover up his darker self by creating a courteous public persona. Everyone has a different persona when they are outside in the eyes of the public and when they are inside. Through Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll reveals his destructive side. Transforming into Mr. Hyde gives Dr. Jekyll a freedom to act and behave without caring about the public’s opinion or about the consequences of his actions. Dr. Jekyll is captured and locked up deep inside, he appears reasonably appropriate on the exterior but his inner reflections drives him towards immorality. As Dr. Jekyll privately turns into Mr. Hyde, not only is his appearance transformed, but also his behavior. This can be a similar caparison on people in today’s society. People with high status or popularity are always being watched with every move they make. If they make one small mistake, then that will look bad on
Dr. Jekyll wants to live two lives, so he creates a potion to create Hyde, a purely evil, dwarfish, ugly, devilish form of himself that allows him to run around and create chaos without getting caught and ruining his real reputation. Dr. Jekyll has been using Hyde to do things he never could in his own skin, but when Jekyll starts taking advantage of his his new self, Hyde starts to take over. “this incoherency of [Jekyll's] life was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on this side that [his] new power tempted [him] until [he]
If Hyde has been described as Hyde "savage, uncivilized, and given to passion…poorly evolved" (Shubh), then perhaps he represents the true, original nature of man, repressed by society, norms, and conscience. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde suggests that this restrained, amoral side of human nature, once given a chance to escape, cannot be controlled. Even in this 'height of western civilization', Victorian England, this tempting evil can overcome even the most virtuous of men. Jekyll is neither good nor bad, but a man whose deeply repressed urges motivated him to separate, but not remove, the evil parts of his nature. There is a misinterpretation that Hyde is an unwanted byproduct of trying to create pure good, that Jekyll is not in control as Hyde, and that Jekyll doesn't enjoy being Hyde. In fact, Jekyll loves being Hyde, he revels in the freedom that he brings him (Stevenson 54), but the problems with his dual personality starts when he has to face the consequences of his actions. Jekyll has a difficult time balancing Hyde's debaucheries and Jekyll's rational, refined side. However, Jekyll realizes too late that he has indulged in Hyde too much and has let him grow out of control. At the beginning of the novel, Hyde was the “smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll” (Stevenson 57). His more youthful appearance represents how young and free Jekyll feels as Hyde, but also symbolizes how little his personality was seen before Jekyll drank his potion. Early in the novel, Hyde is easily controlled, Jekyll can use his potion to limit how often he transforms into Hyde (Stevenson 56). However, as he starts to morph back and forth, it starts to take more and more potion to control the switches until
Although Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde oppose each other in mainly appearance, they do share some similarities in behavior and in thought. Dr. Jekyll is already characterized as a genial host, but Mr. Hyde also has civilized interactions with others. For example, he tries to pay the family of the child he trampled. Although it was for his benefit, it can be thought of otherwise. He also manages to communicate with two other characters in the novel without doing any harm to
Dr. Henry Jekyll is a respected doctor and a friend of Lanyon, a fellow physician and Utterson, a lawyer. He is a well-respected man in the city of London and is known for his charitable works. On the outside, he seems like a harmless individual. What the people of London don’t know is that since a boy Dr. Jekyll has taken part in unnamed corrupt behavior that could ruin his reputation if discovered. Dr. Jekyll finds that the “evil” part of his personality is troublesome, so he takes matters into his own hands and invents a tonic that can allow him to fully become his darker half. This, in turn, brings about the uncanny Mr. Edward Hyde; a creature not of the rational world and free of conscience. His appearance alone is but enough to make one’s hairs stand on end. Mr. Hyde is a violent and irate man who represents the fleshy, sexual aspects of a personality that Victorian men of that time period felt the need to hide. Anyone who crosses his path tells of his
Mr. Edward Hyde, "The Good", is a very timid, quiet, and nice man. He knows that Dr. Jekyll is his dual personality, and he knows Jekyll commits murder when he is not in control of his body. Everyone thinks it's Hyde that commits these murders, but it's Jekyll. "Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was surprised to recognize in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once visited her master and for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill contained impatience."(page 351) This kind of behavior is odd for Hyde because this isn't Hyde. It's Jekyll, and after this he would kill the poor girl with the cane.
“We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.” Written in J.K. Rowling’s book Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Sirius Black says these words to Harry. In the book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll struggles with trying to separate the good and bad within him. I think that Dr. Jekyll would agree with the first part of Black’s quote because he tried to separate the good and bad inside of him by making one identity that held the good and one that held the bad. Henry Jekyll also believed that you are who you choose to be, but his experiment failed in the end when his bad half started to overpower the good.
Stevenson uses the Gothic genre in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to make the reader face up to the dark and frightening regions within themselves by commenting on the Victorian fear of de-evolution. Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species (B1) which introduced the idea of evolution to the public in 1859 which would mean Stevenson would have grown up watching this gradual rise in opposition to religion and how it contributed to developments in science. This theory of evolution may have inspired Stevenson’s imagery of Hyde as being ‘primitive’ and therefore animalistic as with this theory came fears of de-evolution within society where the thought of industrialised, wealthy, and modernised Britain declining to a more primitive state terrified Victorians.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Contrast Essay Yin and Yang are two complementary principles of Chinese philosophy: Yin is negative, dark, and feminine, Yang is positive, bright and masculine. Their interaction is thought to maintain the harmony of the universe and to influence everything within it (“Yin and Yang”). This philosophy parallels the idea of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Dr. Jekyll was a respected doctor and Mr. Hyde was evil. Physically, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are very different because Mr. Hyde looked deformed and that made him terrifying. Hyde is called a “disgustful curiosity” and “hardly human” because he is deformed and also disabled, that causes fear of him, while no one would fear Jekyll. Mentally Jekyll was very intelligent and Mr. Hyde was crazy and couldn’t be controlled. Eventually Jekyll couldn’t prevent himself from turning into Hyde.
In the story “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” we are introduced to the main characters. Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde have a very peculiar bond. Some would think they were father and son, close friends, all of that sort. But in reality, they’re just two normal people living their everyday lives together. One thing’s for sure is that they are two totally different people.
As similar to Jekyll going through the metamorphosis, Dr. Jekyll also goes through the metamorphosis, in which he attains a human form that possesses the dual characteristics. The dual characteristics include Dr. Jekyll as a perfect gentleman, who has fulfilled all of the moral ethics criteria set up by the Victorian London whereas Mr. Hyde is his other half who has the darker characteristics which are not accepted by the society. As Utterson says, “Hyde is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scare know why.” (Stevenson 5). It is undeniable fact that people are easily scared when someone reveals his dark side. Therefore, Utterson and Enfield consider Mr. Hyde as a scary character. Dr. Jekyll is a scientific researcher who loves to perform a variety of scientific researches. As a person knows himself the most, therefore, Jekyll comes to realize that he also has a darker side deep inside him, which in Freud’s terminology is his Id. In order to make his Id co-exist in the real world with his Ego and Superego, he introduces Mr. Hyde in his life. In Dr. Jekyll’s case, duality could also be considered as a Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder resulted due to the clash between his Id, Ego, and Superego. To be considered as a gentleman in the Victorian London, someone had to possess a good profession, income, and fame. Dr.
Dr. Jekyll being an eminent doctor, with a powerful social and educational background, has an extremely sophisticated and refined appearance “a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty” (44). As the quote suggests Dr. Jekyll has a majestic and renowned persona. The charity he does for the society, and his living Standards are all visible through the appearance he manifests. On the other hand, Hyde being Dr. Jekyll’s contrivance, to carry out evil purposes has an unattractive appearance and a repellent demeanor. “There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable” (35). As per the quote Hyde looks very ugly. His deeds are uglier and compliances suitably to his physical self. Dr. Jekyll is
When Utterson first meets Hyde, he is described as someone unnormal with evil hints. It is described that his exterior generates feelings of disgust and even unease to other characters. Yet this deformity is described not only on a physical level but also on moral one (and thus, differs from the depiction of