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The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde By Robert Stevenson

Decent Essays

Tragic Flaw
Scientific experiments and safety have always been considered conflicting ideas, and for a good reason. It is extremely difficult to guarantee a positive outcome when creating something, especially if what is created has never been created before. Without a guaranteed safe outcome, how can an inventor be sure what they have produced is without a flaw? The answer is simple; they cannot. This is why the monster in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and Mr. Hyde in The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde by Robert Stevenson, is so unstable and causes so much trauma. These novels stem off the idea of a creator and creature relationship gone awry. Both creators were too entertained in creating things without a regards to the consequences that came with their creations. Along with these books similitude comes significant differences that make each book unique to the theory that a creature not created by god will more often than not have a tragic flaw.

There is a major reason why “It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it” (Stevenson 42). That is because being curious usually ends in learning something new, and no one has control over the way new found knowledge affects them. The phrase ‘curiosity killed the cat’ is an underlying theme in both of these books: “How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will

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