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 doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two."" He imagines the human soul as the battleground for an "angel- and a "fiend,"" each struggling for mastery. .
Through these experiments, Dr. Jekyll creates a potion, which he hoped would separate and purify each element, but only succeeds in bringing his dark side, Mr. Hyde, into being. Mr. Edward Hyde is a strange, repugnant man who looks faintly pre-human. Mr. Hyde is violent and cruel, and everyone who sees him describes him as ugly and deformed "yet no one can say exactly why. While explaining Mr. Hyde to Utterson, Mr. Enfeild asserts, "He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. He's an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way.
We as human beings struggle constantly to find meaning in our existence. ... The core of human nature, the duality of good and evil, has no doubt raised questions. Day to day duality is what drives us to debate. ... The duality of human nature is what makes some people "evil" and others "good". ... At the moment the evil aspect of the duality of human nature is being assisted along by technology. ...
Henry Jekyll is a physician in London, who is very well respected, and is currently experimenting with the dual nature of man kind. ... Lanyon's narrative voice to give the reader another doctor's view on the dual nature of man. ... Jekyll is a fat, benevolent physician, not without human frailties, who at times by means of a potion projects himself into, or concentrates or precipitates, an evil person of brutal and animal nature taking the name of Hyde" (3449). ... Hyde is described as a primitive creature; he has the original, authentic nature of man. We have two natures; it i...
Descartes: The Nature of Reality Rene Descartes (1596- 1650) is one of the most important philosophers of the past few centuries. ... Descartes mind-body theory combines substance dualism with attribute or property dualism. ... The nature of the body, or material substance, Descartes claimed to be spatial extendedness. ... (Honderich, 1995) Descartes argued that humans are spirits in a mechanical body, made of extended substance, and that the essential attributes of humans are solely attributes of the spirit which do not involve the body at all, such as thinking, willing and conceiving. ...
The duality of Human Nature - Dr. ... Hyde centers upon a conception of humanity as dual in nature; the text not only posits the duality of human nature as its central theme but also forces us to ponder the properties of this duality. ... The names of the characters give away their dual nature and their ways of life. ... Hyde depicts the clear paradoxes of duality and the unity of good and evil in a single human nature. ... Stevenson summarizes his theory of humanity's dual nature, which states that human beings are half virtuous and half criminal, half moral and half amoral. ...
As such, philosophy provides one with no definite answer on any one aspect of human knowledge 1. ... Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, ethic is the science of human conduct, logic is the science of reasoning and metaphysics is the study of ultimate reality. ... In philosophy of mind, dualism is the position that mind and body are in some categorical way separate from each other, and that metal phenomena are in some respects, non-physical in nature 3. ... Almost 2000 years after Plato and Pythagoras reasoned that the human mind or soul could not be identified with the physic...
Stevenson, by integrating the theme of duality deep within his novel's plot, implies that all human beings have numerous and conflicting sides to their character. ... Since the beginning of the novel, Dr Jekyll is aware of his dual nature, so he takes experiments to create a potion that will separate his good and evil side one from another. ... The theme of duality is also marked by the symbolic nature of the name Hyde. ... As Hyde and Jekyll are dual natures of the same entity, we can conclude that so are the London's East and West sides. ... Although he admits that he enjoys his w...
This was another example of dualism as Edinburgh was a city with two very different parts. ... In Victorian times Darwins theory of the origin of the species (the theory that humans are descended from apes) wasn't accepted as many people believed it went against God. So therefore Stevenson making a reference to this when describing Mr Hyde connotes that his behaviour embodies this theory and he is behaving in a very animalistic nature. ... And the idea of dualism is introduced as the two are linked very closely. ... His faade is beginning to fail him and his flawed nature is beginning to...
Hyde centers upon a conception of humanity as dual in nature, although the theme does not emerge fully until the last chapter, when the complete story of the JekyllHyde relationship is revealed. Therefore, we confront the theory of a dual human nature explicitly only after having witnessed all of the events of the novel, including Hyde's crimes and his ultimate eclipsing of Jekyll. The text not only posits the duality of human nature as its central theme but also forces us to ponder the properties of this duality. ... The symbolic nature of the mysterious cellar door that Hyde disappears ...
Human Monster Stevenson Robert Louis. ... Stern acknowledges the battle when he states "Jekyll and Hyde was his first huge selling success in England and America; he wrote it as a shilling shocker, and it became popular at once and ever after as a symbolic portrayal of the dual nature of man, with the moral invested: not to impress us by the victory of good over evil, but he warn us of the strength and ultimate triumph of evil over good once sin is suffered to enter human habitation" (Stern 388). ... Stevenson uses the dual nature of Dr. ... The duality of human nature is ...
