strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde by robert louis stevenson

Dr.Jekyll has a comfortable and well-appointed house, but Mr. In a literal sense, the appearances of buildings in the novel reflect the character of the building’s inhabitants. Jekyll definitely wants to keep up a well-respected façade, even though he has a lot of unsavoury tendencies. We see that friendships can be ruined by differences of opinion.Īppearances figure in the novel both figuratively and literally. Instead, it’s fraught with competition, anger, and eventually an irreconcilable quarrel. Jekyll, it’s certainly not as unconditional as the loyalty Mr Utterson bears for Dr. In this sense, friendship acts as both a motivator and an enabler. In trying to unravel the secret, he uncovers crucial pieces of information. Aside from human curiosity, Utterson is compelled to uncover the mystery of the evil man because of his friendship with Dr. Jekyll finds that the pull to evil has been magnified after months of repression.įriendship in Dr. Jekyll’s two-month hiatus from being Hyde Dr. The more Jekyll’s forbidden appetites are repressed, the more he desires the life of Hyde, and the stronger Hyde grows. The repression here is that of Victorian Britain: no sexual appetites, no violence, and no great expressions of emotion, at least in the public sphere. Repression is indisputably a cause of troubles in Dr. The big question, of course, is whether or not good can be separated from evil, or whether the two are forever intertwined. However, Hyde does end up dead, perhaps suggesting a weakness or failure of evil.

Since Hyde seems to be taking over, one could argue that evil is stronger than good. In the novella the battle between good and evil rages within the individual. Hyde is as an allegory about the good and evil that exist in all men, and about our struggle with these two sides of our personality. Using two completely different characters with different names and appearances gets his message of human duality across effectively.ĭr. Stevenson uses the characters of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to expresses his beliefs about human duality by introducing them as two contrasting characters. Jekyll asserts that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” This section looks at the Key themes in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde by robert louis stevenson