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Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde Analysis

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In the world of psychology, there is a theory, the tabula rusa(“blank slate”), which states man’s personality grows from experiences, but there are many examples that show mankind is created to exemplify goodness, although many easily stray from the path. The novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson focuses on the duality of man’s inner nature, demonstrating the development of a doctor’s evil as it slowly consumes him. Throughout the work, Stevenson merges his philosophy of human nature with the good-natured Dr. Jekyll and the mysterious evil, Mr. Hyde. As the plot thickens, Stevenson uses illustrious diction to clarify the positives of Jekyll, the negative aura of Hyde, and he displays his belief that man …show more content…

The reader gets quite a bad first impression of Mr. Hyde as he “trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming to the ground” (Stevenson 4), already foreshadowing more horrific events to be caused with his little remorse. The choice of his reaction of trampling calmly over a little girl demonstrates Mr. Hyde’s inhumane feeling as well as a possible joy of hurting others. After the first encounter with the unnerving Mr. Hyde, the protagonist of the story, Mr. Utterson, goes out of his way to cross paths with the man once more. As a result of the endless questioning, Utterson faces an animal that “snarled aloud into a savage laugh” (Stevenson 17) in a hurried craze. By having Hyde snarl, it connotes a more abhorring nature of the man, and describing his laugh as savage sends out warning signs of more incidents of pain to be caused by him. While Jekyll struggles to choose good or evil, Hyde does not struggle at all as he does not face any difficult choices, so he tries to take advantage of what he believes is his weaker side. Through Dr. Jekyll’s detailed statement, Stevenson unleashes a torrent of his philosophy upon mankind’s nature. After indulging in his evil side for a while, Jekyll finally decides to choose “the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes” (Stevenson 91), an example of one’s choice of who they truly are as a person. Through the loss of his dreams, the doctor

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