The strange case of dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde - Essay Example

Literature 4 April Duality in the Novel “Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde” by R.L.Stevenson According to the Free Online Dictionary “Duality is the quality or character of being twofold, dichotomy” (Free Online Dictionary). In his story “Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde” Stevenson examines the theme of good and bad co-existing in one person, the topic of duality. Stevenson does not consider a person to be either good or bad, black or white. There is a little bit of each in one personality. Dr.Jekyll – the main character in the story - says “With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two…It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both” (Stevenson, p.82) All his life Dr.

Jekyll was trying to be good, to suppress the evil side of his personality. But his curiosity and his desire to try the other life, to see what pleasures it can bring, moved him to the experiment of dividing himself into two different personalities. In the body of Mr.Hyde Dr.Jekyll was able to free his desires that were not virtuous, to give in to the life’s temptations. It was an interesting game at first, while he could still decide when to be Jekyll and when to be Hyde, but then it turned into a tragedy, when his evil self started to dominate, until it was almost impossible to become Dr.

Jekyll again, and led to the death of this character. Stevenson examined the theme of human pride and human’s inability to foresee the consequences of his actions. Inventing his elixir, Jekyll did not know what will be the result of this action, and the end was very sad. The evil in the story is much more active than the good. Jekyll created his evil dual, not good one. The evil is always ready to start an independent life. There is a paradox of freedom in being evil. The person, who is enslaved by evil, becomes free from moral borders and pangs of conscience.

The only fear that Hyde has is the fear of death. Stevenson showed that you cannot let just a little bit of evil out. If a person does an evil deed voluntarily, like Jekyll did in the personality of Hyde, he turns into the slave of evil. One starts with something little, like some sexual pleasures that Jekyll was looking for, and ends up with senseless cruelty to a little girl and finally murder of Mr. Carew. The evil completely possesses the one who voluntarily chose this path. When Jekyll started to turn into Hyde without his will, he realized that he lost himself forever.

Stevenson in his story discovered not only moral transformation of a good person into his evil twin, but also physical transformation. The author created the image of the person’s duality not only inside but on the outside too, and he showed the victory of evil over good, in case when a person makes a conscious choice to be evil and to give in to its pleasures and outward freedom. Answering a question of why this strange story happened to Mr. Jekyll, it is apparent that this was his own desire to give in to the evil, to submit to it.

It is possible that his human pride made the better of him. Dr. Jekyll thought that he could play with evil and control it, but apparently, being just weak human being it was much easier to give in to the pleasures than to pursue the life of virtue. This is a good lesson that everyone should think about, playing with the thought of giving in to the evil pleasure just one time, because it is easier to get on the path down, than to climb up. Works cited Free Online Dictionary. Web. 2 April 2011 R.L.Stevenson.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Penguin edition, 1979. Print