Mr Hyde

How does Stevenson explore ideas of good and evil in the novella “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr, Hyde. Jekyll and Hyde are like a dual personality, a single individual dissociate into two. They have become what Otto status calls opposing selves, According to Rank, the double in primitive societies is conceived of as a shadow, representing both the living person and the dead. This shadow survives the self, insuring immortality and thus functioning as a kind of guardian angel. In modern civilizations, nonetheless, the shadow becomes an omen of death to the self-conscious person.

Doubles become opposites and demons rather than guardian angels. This is particularly true in inhibited or self-restrained modern societies. Also the role of `good` and `evil` in a person is generally balanced, and In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hyde thus becomes Jekyll demonic, monstrous self. Certainly Stevenson presents him as such from the outset. Hissing as he speaks, Hyde has "a kind of black sneering coolness . . . like Satan”.

Furthermore the hissing is a function of a snake, and as snakes are seen as evil and devious animals also because of Adam and eve, and temptation it fits the perfect description for Mr Hyde. Also Hyde represents the evil side of Jekyll dual personality, and Jekyll is the good side, and Hyde is known through He also strikes those who witness him as being deformed -- "colourless and dwarfish" and simian like. He is both monster and shadows another self not only for Jekyll but for all the I assume upright Victorian bachelors of the story who recognize his deformity and for who he becomes both mischievous sprite and deaths knell.

The Strange Cafe unfolds with the search by these men to uncover the secret of Hyde. As the narrator/lawyer, Utterson, says, "If he be Mr. Hyde . . . I shall be Mr. Seek" and so will they all. Utterson begins his quest with a rapid search for his own demons. Fearing for Jekyll because the good doctor has so strangely altered his will in favour of Hyde, Utterson examines his own conscience, "and the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded a while in his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old evil should leap to light there" .Like so many famous Victorians, Utterson lives a mildly double life and feels mildly apprehensive about it.

A repulsive dwarf like Hyde may jump out from his own boxed self, but for him such art unlikely creature is still envisioned as a toy. Although, from the beginning Hyde fills him with distaste for life, not until the final, fatal night, after he storms the cabinet, can Utterson conceive of the enormity of Jekyll second self.

Only then does he realize that "he was looking on the body of a self-destroyer” Jekyll and Hyde are one in death as they must have been in life. out the story as a `juggernaut`(monster),and this represents evil a Poole, Jekyll servant, and Lanyon, his medical collaborator, are even more incredulous. When Poole sees Jekyll/Hyde in his final form, he thinks he sees his master with a "mask" on his face: "that thing was not my master and there's the truth" .Yet again, Poole's "thing" is monkey-like and dwarfish, and it weeps "like a woman or a lost soul" .When Poole and Utterson hear Jekyll on the opposite side of the door that last night, they react like Ralph Nickleby's would-be rescuers.

The voice they hear sounds like something "other," not like the person they know. Lanyon, alas, never survives to that final night. An earlier party to the knowledge that Jekyll and Hyde are one, he has already lost his life to that secret. A man who believes in rationalism and honest morality, Lanyon simply cannot adapt to the truths uncovered in the revelation of Hyde: improbability. He sinks slowly into death, his body following the lead of his "sickened" soul.

His too is a kind of suicide, a death permitted, if not willed. Lanyon simply cannot accommodate himself to the horror of Jekyll unveil monstrosity.
As the novella progresses into the last chapter Jekyll narrates trough a letter that Utterson finds how he was born into a rich household that was economically secure, Jekyll also narrates about his smooth like and his secret requirements.

So Jekyll begin to restore into Hyde without drinking the situation because every bad deed that Hyde commits it eliminates all the good Jekyll does. Just like in the novella after Hyde transforms back into Jekyll, so he goes around the town repairing all the damage Hyde has done, also because the negative side of Jekyll has become more powerful, so now the good side can not contain Hyde (evil side).Moreover Jekyll has many secret temptations that he wanted to do but his conscience would not allow him to do. So as a solution to these temptations his negative side would four fill these secret temptations.

Stevenson has many different messages the he wanted to reveal to the reader such as the obvious one, dual personality, this means that every person has two sections to a person’s individuality, and that the two sections are `good` and `evil`.

Although Jekyll achieved his scientific goal which was to separate the good and bad from a person, intern as a consequence he manage to kill one of his companions – high category gentleman, plus ultimately himself. He committed this because he believes that separation is the best way to experience both good and evil side to life, I also agree with this because you will receive a greater depth of understand of the two sections to your personalities.

So in conclusion Stevenson explorers ideas of good & evil is a extravagant way because such as Jekyll going around the town and writing checks to every person that Hyde has hurt, Moreover there is one major theme, which is duality (two states, two poles), and this theme accrues throughout the whole novella, and Stevenson expresses this in a very intelligent way because he combines his theory of man having two sections to their personality with the main theme in the novella. Also Jekyll does not argue that there are only two personalities within man but that there may be many and that the end part only account for a small proportion.

The theme of duality is mainly expressed through the character reactions towards Hyde. Also the mirror in the Jekyll room is an immense sign in the novella because mirrors were forbidden in rooms due to traditions, and the mirror was a sign of duality because there is always someone looking into the mirror and the person being reflected, and this was a sign of duality. Stevenson's characters are wanting in self-knowledge; they ultimately fail to understand the links between duality, demons, and death. Stevenson's readers are therefore forced to try to solve the mystery of the strange case. However, Stevenson leads us in this attempt. For even in extremis, his Jekyll fears exposure more than death. This is why lie finally kills himself when the door is forced. Hyde must be hidden if it takes death to hide him, and Jekyll must finally be his own murderer to avoid full disclosure of the duality. Here Stevenson is not only revealing human natures deeply dishevelled double nature; he is also castigating Victorian betrayal.

The kind of dual life that characters in this book lead is not only false but suicidal. As Stevenson says in his essay "arrange Morals": "We should not live alternately with our rival tendencies in continual see-saw of passion and disgust, but seek some path on which the tendencies shall no longer oppose, but provide each other to common end." To behave otherwise, his tale implies, is to court the death of accuracy, the loss of one's self. If altruism and bestiality are both embedded in human nature, one must not only know this rationally as did Jekyll, but must live comfortably with this knowledge.

People in the crowd respond to Hyde in an exceptionally rude manor because every time someone approaches him they start to feel the urge to dismiss themselves from is presents, this is due to the evil vibe that Hyde let off, Also the language that Stevenson uses also adds to the evil vibe that Hyde releases. As well as the sounds that he makes contributes to the juggernaut (Hyde). Along with there is also the element of mystery, because you don’t know what Hyde is going to do next or when you don’t know what you’re going to establish that Hyde and Jekyll are the same people.

Jekyll asserts that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” and he imagines the human soul as the battleground for an “angel” and an “evil person,” each struggling for mastery. But his potion, which he hoped would separate and sanitize each element, succeeds only in bringing the dark side into being—Hyde emerges, but he has no angelic counterpart. Once unleashed, Hyde slowly takes over, until Jekyll ceases to exist. If man is half angel and half fiend, one wonders what happens to the “angel” at the end of the novel.
Perhaps the angel gives way permanently to Jekyll devil. Or perhaps Jekyll is simply mistaken: man is not “truly two” but is first and foremost the primitive creature personified in Hyde, brought under tentative control by civilization, law, and conscience. According to this theory, the potion simply strips away the elegant cover-up, exposing man's essential nature. Certainly, the novel goes out of its way to paint Hyde as animalistic—he is hairy and ugly; he conducts himself according to instinct rather than reason; Utterson describes him as a “troglodyte,” or prehistoric creature. Yet if Hyde were just an animal, we would not expect him to take such delight in crime. Indeed, he seems to commit violent acts against innocents for no reason except the joy of it—something that no animal would do. He appears deliberately and happily immortal rather than mortal; he knows the moral law and basks in his breach of it. For an animalistic creature, furthermore, Hyde seems oddly at home in the urban landscape. All of these observations imply that perhaps civilization, too, has its dark side. Ultimately, while Stevenson clearly asserts human nature as possessing two aspects, he leaves open the question of what these aspects constitute. Perhaps they consist of evil and asset; perhaps they represent one's inner animal and the appearance that civilization has imposed. Stevenson enhances the richness of the novel by leaving us to look within ourselves to find the answers.