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Good and Evil in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Good and Evil in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Throughout the story of “The Strange Case Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, presents his idea of the duality of man- where we all have a dark, wicked side within us, where evil is held in waiting to surface, but we hide it away, we pretend it does not exist, and we keep it tame. He presents this idea by using two protagonists, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, who are actually the same person. One of these characters symbolizes the normal side of a person represented by the respectable Dr Jekyll, who is a typical upper class Victorian, and the other, Mr Hyde, a deformed man, signifies the purest of evil. During the course of …show more content…

Hyde begins to appear merely when Jekyll remembers the wicked deeds he committed. His change from these two characters becomes so uncontrollable that at one point in the story he falls asleep as Dr Jekyll, and then wakes up as Mr. Hyde. Eventually he committed suicide as he could no longer control his actions. Stevenson uses many themes throughout this storyline to present good and evil. One of the main beliefs in the Victorian society shown in “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” is physiognomy. We can see this in the story when Stevenson’s describes Mr Hyde as “ugly”,”wicked-looking” and “evil”. We also see this when the innocent, good character in the situation, Sir Danvers Carew, is described as an “aged and beautiful gentleman with white hair”. This shows that Stevenson could have believed in physiognomy or he used it because it was a key part of Victorian society where the good character is beautiful and the evil character is ugly. Another aspect of Victorian society that is shown in the story is hypocrisy. Two examples of this during the novel are when two characters, Richard Enfield and Sir Danvers Carew, are wandering the streets of London in the early hours of the morning. This seems like they were up to something they shouldn’t have been doing. Enfield speaks of the incident when Mr Hyde trampled down the young girl, a figure

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