Friday, November 15, 2013

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde


Traci (Marie)

November 15, 2013

                                                Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

            Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson was a perplexing novel to understand. Dr. Jekyll was concerned with being moral and highly regarded in the community. He suffered from issues of evil desire. Mr. Hyde became his alter ego personality that eventually took him over. He struggled with the issue of his character of a good person and his character as a bad person. This moral dilemma drove him crazy. Dr. Jekyll eventually became so engrossed in Mr. Hyde that he could not control his bad behavior. Dr. Jekyll struggled with the moral dilemma of wanting to get rid of Mr. Hyde but knowing that in order to do that he would have to take his own life which was very much against his beliefs. It started as just an experiment to “let the evil side out” but eventually this evil side took over and he became a murderer. He had no conscience what-so-ever about doing the evil acts. Dr. Jekyll struggled until the evil Mr. Hyde took over completely. He describes Mr. Hyde’s behavior as “centered on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone.” Dr. Jekyll was described as “waking again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste to undo the evil done by Hyde.” It sounds as if he tried to deal with it as long as possible and then just could not take it anymore. Did he make the right decision to “kill off” the evil? Or should he have stayed with his moral compass of not believing in the that sort of action….

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