The Representation of Evil in Stevensons Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Essay

The Representation of Evil in Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde This essay will show how evil is represented in Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'. 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' is about evil and the duality of people's personalities. To show this I will focus on Stevenson's use of characterization, setting, historical, social and cultural context, settings, symbols and language. Robert Stevenson lived in the Victorian era, this was a very repressive and strict society where it was expected that middle class men would visit prostitutes. This was because people were not supposed to be like animals and have animal instincts such as lust. This meant that middle class men would only sleep with their wives so they could have children and carry on the bloodline. This society would have influenced Stevenson as he was a middle class man himself and he would have experienced his own stifled emotions and hidden instincts, such as lust and rage. Stevenson may also have taken inspiration for the character Mr. Hyde from the crimes of Jack the Ripper who was committing his violent crimes on women at that time. Stevenson may have also been influenced by Mary Shelly's 'Frankenstein', which also deals with the themes of dual personalities and evil. In the text Stevenson uses a lot of powerful imagery when describing Mr. Hyde. He uses words such as detestable and deformed. These words create a picture in the readers mind and give them a general feeling of horror, evil and mistrust. Through out the play Stevenson refers to Mr. Hyde as an animal "God bless me the man seems hardly human". This makes the reader picture Mr. Hyde as s... ...one is particularley important and relevant due to the advances of science, which have seen scientists able to clone human embryos. As we can see in 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' and also in Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein" people who play with nature and do not take responsibility for their work and creations ultimately end up creating evil things which they do not understand or know how to control. It could be said that Stevenson wrote the story as a warning to Victorian society about repression and science or maybe it was just an interesting mystery story, which happens to have like many fictions and stories to have become almost true. To conclude I think that evil is effectively portrayed in 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'. Stevenson does this by focusing mainly on the themes of duality and suppression of and in human nature.