The Duality of Human Nature
“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is a classic mystery story that centers upon a conception of humanity as dual in nature. This central theme does not fully emerge until the last chapter when the relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is revealed.Dr. Henry Jekyll is a well - respected doctor in his community. He is a good friend of Dr. Hastie Lanyon, a fellow physician, and Mr. Gabriel John Utterson, a lawyer. Dr. Jekyll is an apparently prosperous man, well established in the community, and known for his decency and charitable works. Since his youth, however, he has secretly engaged in unspecified corrupt behaviour. Jekyll finds this dark side a burden and undertakes experiments intended to separate his good and evil selves from one another. He asserts that “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 doom
This strange case of Jekyll and Hyde does not end happily and the “good” side of Jekyll does not win. In fact, “evils” dominance over the body of Dr. Jekyll eventually takes its toll. Jekyll is able to admit that after experimenting with Hyde, eventually the ugly man’s demands become extreme, seeking more and more power. Soon Jekyll has no control over Hyde, who appears by himself whenever Jekyll dozes off to sleep. He admits, “I was slowly loosing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.” Finally, Jekyll can no longer turn back to his Jekyll – self and, as Hyde, kills himself. In the letter to Utterson, Jekyll explains that not only him and Hyde were a composite of good and evil, but all people are. He asserts, “ I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, non could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was becaus
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Approximate Word count = 647
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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