My Analysis of the Story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Analysis, Pages 12 (2915 words)

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When reading the novella, The Strange Case od Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, most readers will think about how weird this story is but will understand how amazing this novella is. Many readers may see this as showing that there is good in humanity. Others will say that this portrays the evil within humanity. The story shows both the evil and good in humanity in my eyes. But, in my opinion the novella depicts humanity as being inherently bad because Dr.

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Jekyll wanted to create a potion that will split both of his good nature and bad nature. He wanted to split these two not to remove the bad, but so he could have his evil side and not feel guilty for expressing that side. Many can argue that he created the potion to separate his good and evil side for the better, but he actually made the potion, so he can act out and not feel guilty towards people.

There can be many arguments saying that this shows humanity is good because he wants to create a potion that will separate his good and evil side meaning he wants his evil side gone.

Many people will confuse the novella and take it out of context. In all reality Dr. Jekyll wanted to create this potion to hide his true self and to act out his evil side with no consequence of his image or no guilt feeling towards people. This was an evil creation and shows that people do have a selfish side and will do literally anything to hide from reality.

This shows that humanity has weak spots because people do not want to work on themselves, they just want the fast way and they want everything to themselves. He never talked about giving this potion out to others, so they can act out against people with no consequence. He created this potion only for him, because he wanted to fit in and hide his bad side.

Also, Dr. Jekyll, his good side is an older person and he is a respected professor while Hyde is the younger version of him while having the bad qualities and no guilt. If we take this and analyze this, we can say if someone has a higher class and is respected, they have to be “perfect” all the time they cannot act out or seem like a bad person because it will make their image look bad. While Hyde is younger and can get away with being rude or acting out towards people. Hyde is also a lower class compared to Dr. Jekyll, so this just shows how much more pressure respected people have to keep their image looking squeaky clean. This just shows the evil side of people everybody has. Nobody is perfect because everyone has anger and deep-down dark thoughts. This shows that humanity is not perfect and there will always evil and good in it. But this novella depicts the evil side of humanity because it is a man of higher class using his knowledge and equipment to make something that will hide his true self while having no consequence this shows selfishness and carelessness.

The novella includes dark confessions that show how evil some people can really be. I am not sure this shows that humanity is evil itself but definitely shows that certain people are crazy in the head. The line where it said Hyde killed a man and he enjoyed it shows how evil this person is. Also, Dr. Jekyll never says he is Hyde, or he is never physically Hyde. He is always Dr. Jekyll and takes blame for anything he has done as “Hyde”. I think he uses this other person as a disguise in a way. It hides his true self even though Dr. Jekyll will take blame for everything he does as “Hyde”. It is confusing to understand but it is almost like he was never Hyde he is always Dr. Jekyll doing these evil things. He is always Dr. Jekyll when being both evil and good. He just wants no consequences for the things he is doing so he uses Hyde as a shield to reflect all the backlash. This makes a lot of sense because he is not evil or good, he is really timid. He keeps all of his thoughts and sins to himself. They built up over time and he basically exploded. He has this burst of anger and wanting to do rebellious things as “Hyde”, but he is still himself and is aware of it. This shows that he is scared to get caught doing such things as is possibly caring for other people’s feelings if he is wanting to not feel the guilt. Or maybe he does not care and wants to make it easier to get over what he has done to people. This argument can go both ways.

This novella shows the evil side of humanity because we do create things that destroy the Earth but keeps the people happy. It shows our selfish ways and carelessness ways. For example, Dr. Jekyll created this potion for the evil and wanted it to commit evil things without consequence. People created factories to create items much quicker and it only destroys our Earth with pollution. People created cars to travel places faster but that also hurts our home with pollution and kills many people a year with car accidents. This shows the unnoticed evil humanity even if there is no intention of it being bad. There will always be a good and bad in something so innocent and helping. It is just how we look at things and perceive something. In this case the novella definitely shows the evil side of humanity because of the selfishness and carelessness.

Another example of why this would depict the evil side of humanity is that Dr. Jekyll wanted to get away with these sins. This can compare to real life because many higher up people with money and power will want to get away with almost anything. Money and power definitely can bring the evil out in people. There are many people that are living life luxurious that have done things that a normal person would be in jail for. This is because they have money and power. This compares to the potion in the novella because the potion allows Dr. Jekyll to create a fake person to get away with anything he wants. In reality people higher up in class can get away with almost anything because of their power and money they have over others.

The style of this novella is written in an older style. Since it was written in the Victorian era. To the audience reading the story now, it will seem older. The style actually has a lot to do with the story and the feel of it overall. In the past, many writers were straight forward and darker with their writing. Compared to today, writers are more cautious when writing to not affect the reader or certain audience. Since this is an older story. Readers will see the dark messages being written and might feel that darkness making the story feel interesting and grimy in a way. This definitely gives the reader a raw feeling of detail depicting the evil side of humanity. The author possibly did not want to show the evil side of humanity, but since it was written in the past, people of the present time might read this differently than people in the past. As dark and evil this story might seem to some people, it might be a genuine story for others because they are familiar with the writing style being straight forward with no sugar coating. With that being said the writing style plays a huge part of the story showing the darkness and raw content of the story. It gives the reader a feeling of evil and shows that some people will do anything for their own good.

There is another huge part that plays in this story with either depicting evil or good in humanity. That is that evil can either be interpreted as strong or weak. Same goes for being “good” being good can show both weakness and strength. So, firstly let us talk about the evil in humanity. Readers will know already that in the story Dr. Jekyll is dying or “Mr. Hyde” is actually dying. Many can argue that being evil is strong because it shows how the person might not care for his actions and they are brave for expressing their anger. But, in reality evil shows weakness because in the end the evil person dies. The evil person Hyde is dying in the story. Being “good” shows strength because being good is good. It shows that you have character and good intentions. It shows you care for people and others while being evil will only show weakness because you are not trying to do good for others. Being evil is selfish and shows you cannot fight the urge to hurt others. While being good shows extreme bravery because you are willing to help and willing to change for the better. If readers think about it good will always win against evil. This shows in almost every story. Good will always defeat evil. If Dr. Jekyll never created this potion he would have never suffered or ended up dying in the end. He would be known as the good guy and live on. But instead he wanted to create this potion for evil and he ended up meeting his demise.

With that being said, evil vs good. In reality there are no evil and no good. There are just actions and consequences. There are mistakes and there are correct choices. But of course, this will be different for everybody since we all think differently and have different ways of living. People may perceive something as good while another thinks that is straight up evil. Evil nor good wins they are just there to label different topics and events. In the story many will think this shows the evil in humanity while others say it shows the good in humanity. There are many arguments. One can say this story shows the evil in humanity because Dr. Jekyll is trying to be god and create something of power. Or that he wants to create this potion to hurt others and get away with no consequences. Others can state that this shows the good in humanity because he is creating something that can help and benefit him showing that he is very smart and can do anything he puts his mind to. There are plenty of arguments that can go back and forth forever. I think that this depicts both evil and good in humanity. But, mostly the evil side of humanity because he is hurting others and his dark side is shining very bright.

There are disturbing events that happened in the story just proving that this shows the evil side of humanity. Many can argue that death is not evil. I can argue back saying that killing another man is evil because you are not entitled to take another person’s life away. That is god’s job not ours. Yes, death is not evil, but murder surely is. This is a topic that has many arguments that can go on forever. If we talk about killing people, we have to talk about killing animals as well because almost everything is contradicting. Killing another man is evil but murdering animals and eating them is not evil? We raise animals, kill them, cook them, and then eat them to keep us fed and healthy. I do not think this is evil because it is life and we have to kill animals to survive. So why is killing another man evil? Killing another man for your selfish intentions is evil in my opinion because you are taking away his life he is living and turning it into nothing. That man could have had a wife and family that is not suffering without that man. So, the family is now hurting because of that one action that did not have to happen. But if a man is hurting you or trying to kill you and you have to act on that then it is not selfish because you are protecting yourself and keeping yourself safe. So, everything has a reason and needs an explanation for it to be “okay”. That is the funny thing to me that there are so many things that have to be explained for it to be “okay”. Back to the subject, in the story Dr. Jekyll does not protect himself from an enemy he kills somebody as Mr. Hyde with bad intentions which makes it evil.

The story shows the evil side of humanity and the writing style helps prove it because it is so straight forward with no type of remorse. The story feels dark and blunt when reading it.

The way Dr. Jekyll thinks, and acts shows that he is not too fond of humanity. He seems like he has some type of anxiety or mental illness causing him to think the way he does. Having a mental illness does not show evil. But in the past many people did not perceive mental illness as a good thing. Many were frightened by that fact that the person with the illness is different and they feared the person making them out to seem evil. In this situation it is just a prediction that Dr Jekyll might have had some type of mental illness creating his dark inner thoughts and his actions. Every genius has an evil side inside of them. This definitely showed in the story.

Also, Dr. Jekyll was the good side of him, but still had those dark thoughts in the back of his head. He created Mr. Hyde to let these dark actions out. Since Mr. Hyde was a peasant and was a lower-class person in the world he could act out on his dark thoughts. It is said that lower class people are born criminals and stray away from society. This makes people to believe that they are evil and criminal. That is why acting out as Mr. Hyde would make sense to him because it made him a degenerate in society. Hyde would do the evilest thing and not feel any remorse. In Dr. Jekyll’s head he thinks that he is good compared to Mr. Hyde. In reality it is him he is both people. His mind is still his and this just shows that anybody is capable of such evil in humanity. He may lie to himself and think he is good but in reality, he is actually evil himself.

There are plenty of ways to look at this situation with the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Maybe he is not evil, and he just needs help. We can also look into his mind and see that he clearly has a mental illness that is shifting his thoughts and creating a monster. If he did not have this mental illness, he would not have committed these murders. He would not act out thinking he is two different people in one. He could be imaging that he is another person and thinks he can get away with the actions but in reality, he is schizophrenic with a multiple personality disorder. This can change the whole story because if we look at it with logic. Readers can predict that maybe he is going through attacks that are causing him to believe he is another person then he commits these crimes thinking he is going to get away with it. This mental illness would change the whole story because there would be no potion that he creates. It would all be in his imagination making him believe that he is taking something that will turn him into another person while splitting his emotions into separate minds. If we look deep enough it is possible that Dr. Jekyll might have had some sort of multiple personality disorder and possibly was overlooked because this story took place in the past where mental health was not studied as much and was not considered a thing. In the past mental health and mental illness was looked at as an evil thing and they had their own remedies to treat these illnesses that usually made the illness worsen. Maybe Dr. Jekyll was not evil after all and just had an illness that affected his way of thinking.

Looking at the story without the mental illness involved many can agree that Dr. Jekyll was definitely depicting the evil side of humanity because he created a potion that would allow him to commit crimes and act like a monster without exposing his true self. This shows how selfish and shallow this character really is. I would even say that he is selfish because he created this potion for his own guilty pleasures. He also is weak because he is hiding behind another person to commit these crimes and harmful acts. This story definitely shows the evil side of humanity. There are many ways to look at stories that will always make stories interesting when looking deeper. Keep your mind open to new ideas and see what it can lead you to believing.