Analysing My Chosen Character

Analysing My Chosen Character

 The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

My chosen character is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because they are one person but just different sides, good and evil. 

-Dr Henry Jekyll/Mr Hyde

The good side to this character is the presentable gentlemen Dr Jekyll. In the beginning of the book the audience are led to believe that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are two different people, Dr Jekyll comes across as very prim and proper, an upper class member of society, which is an extremely important part of his character.  He is a very well respected man because of his status and wealth, he has a circle of friends which include Utterson the lawyer, and Lanyon another doctor.

His character starts to change as you continue the story and he starts to act erratically at times. At this point he was experimenting with his ideas of seperating your good and evil side or 'releasing the creature within'. He says that he entered this experiment with pure motives which could be questioned as he also says that he was motivated by dark urges such as ambition, pride and temptation when his first experiment worked, this was the start to Mr Hyde. 

After this, Hyde seems to start to take over the body and mind of Dr Jekyll more often and this persona becomes more dominant as the book goes on. 

After Mr Hyde takes complete control over Dr Jekyll, Stevenson is conveying a very strong message about human nature, which made a lot of people question morality. Does everyone have an evil side to them which could emerge at any point whether you like it or not? 

Stevenson describes Hyde as a creature, which brings us back to the argument between religion and science. Have we evolved from animals or did God create us? And if God created us did he create the evil that could be inside us?

I believe that in Victorian times, society was ruled by religion and law, however it was also greatly affected by wealth, class and which sex you were. In this book, is Stevenson trying to say that despite all our laws, education and breeding we have not evolved from animals but animal urges are still present underneath. 

I think Stevenson is suggesting in this book that every human has this dark side to them and if you let this side even start to tempt you, then it could take over.