Literary Essay

An essay on “The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll an Mr.Hyde”

The novel “The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde” was written by Robert Louis Stevenson, is about a scientist that created a potion that took out the bad part of the soul, the scientist was called Dr.Jekyll and the bad part was called Mr.Hyde. Mr.Hyde did a lot of bad things such as, he trumpled a girl and killed Mr.Carew. Finally Dr.Jekyll killed himself because if he did that he would kill Mr.Hyde. This essay would talk about the main themes of the story, violence, duality human nature and the importance of reputation.

We consider violence as a theme, from the point of view of the guilty and the innocent. The guilty was Mr.Hyde because he killed all the people, such us Mr.Carew, and the innocent was Dr. Jekyll because he did not do anything. Another point of view may be that Dr. Jekyll was the guilty, because he created the potion and without that potion nothing would happen. Although Mr. Hyde killed a lot of people, he had not done that on purpose, Hyde could have an evil personality but he could not kill anyone, so under this point of view Hyde would be the innocent. “It was Hyde,after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jeckyll was no worse, he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired;he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde.”

Another theme was the Duality of Human nature, it was about the personality of Mr.Hyde that was like an animal but with some changes. Mr.Hyde was an animal because he was hairy, He did not talk well, was violent and he walked as an animal, a situation in the story that justify this description is when Eafield told Utterson about the story of the girl trampled. The thing that separated an animal from Mr. Hyde was that he killed for pleasure because he was bad and crazy. He killed Mr. Carew and heart a girl. “I can´t see what harm it would do… There is something wrong with his appearance, something displeasing, and something downright detestable”  

The importance of reputation was an important theme in this story because Mr. Utterson suspected that Dr. Jeckyll was Mr. Hyde, but if he said that he was, all the people would told him that it would be very late because Mr. Hyde had killed and heart a lot of people, such us a girl and Mr.Carew, and if he did not say anything then all the people would know that Utterson knew about Hyde, so he would lose his reputation, also anyone would not choose Utterson to be his lawyer, although he was a very good one. “I am ashamed of my long tongue. Let us a bargain never to refer to this again.”

In conclusion, this story is full of interesting themes but the most important are those that this essay talks about: the violence, the duality of human nature and the importance of reputation. Another point to analyze deeply is how the soul of a person can change under differents circumstances and how weak can be a human being, carrying to do terrible things. For me there are topics that touch themes of the present life so it is a very good and interesting story to read and analyze.