Jekyll and Hyde - Themes
- Created by: alw3
- Created on: 19-04-18 15:20
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- Jekyll and Hyde - Themes
- The law and unexplained
- Utterson represents the standards of conventional society and the law. Like Lanyon, he does not have the imagination to understand what Jekyll is doing.
- That is why Jekyll cannot confide in him about what is happening, even though they are old friends.
- It is also why, throughout the novel, Stevenson makes Utterson come to all the wrong conclusions
- The law blinds him to the truth
- It is because Utterson is a lawyer that he constantly suspects Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll or has some other criminal purpose.
- It is because Utterson is a lawyer that he constantly suspects Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll or has some other criminal purpose.
- At the end of Chapter 8, The Last Night, Utterson promises the servant, Poole: "I shall be back before midnight, when we shall send for the police."
- But neither he nor the police (the other arm of the law) are heard of again.
- Their silence is like the death of Lanyon; they have no power to deal with the unexplained that Jekyll has unleashed.
- Utterson represents the standards of conventional society and the law. Like Lanyon, he does not have the imagination to understand what Jekyll is doing.
- Duality of human nature
- In Chapter 10, Jekyll writes clearly about the dual nature of human beings.
- As a young, educated man from a respectable family, he maintained an appearance of good behaviour at all times...
- But he says this was a fraud - no one suspected his true nature, which was at times extremely immoral.
- Jekyll's experiments began in an attempt to separate the two sides of human nature and destroy the evil one.
- He discovered that the evil part of his nature was, indeed, part of himself, and therefore, in some sense, natural and part of the whole.
- In Chapter 10, Jekyll writes clearly about the dual nature of human beings.
- Science and the unexplained
- There is a 'war of attitudes' between Jekyll and Lanyon, and both men are destroyed by their beliefs.
- Lanyon by his inability to imagine or accept a world beyond the rational and scientific; Jekyll by accepting and unleashing the dark powers that lie beyond.
- By contrast, in his final 'confession', Jekyll says his investigations "led wholly towards the mystic and the transcendental".
- He is fascinated by the mystery of human nature - and such investigations could be seen as closer to religion and psychology than traditional 19thcentury science.
- Jekyll and Lanyon are both scientists. Science traditionally explains the real world by means of experiment and observation
- Scientists are usually dismissive of the supernatural
- Stevenson asks the reader to examine for themselves which man comes closer to the truth.
- Lanyon has avoided Jekyll for ten years because of his 'fanciful' and 'wrong minded' ideas and investigations.By contrast,
- There is a 'war of attitudes' between Jekyll and Lanyon, and both men are destroyed by their beliefs.
- The size and age of Jekyll and Hyde
- Hyde is younger and more energetic than Jekyll. This suggests evil is something that develops later in life, after a period of childhood innocence.
- It also suggests Stevenson felt there is something primitively energetic and exciting about mankind's baser nature; that the 'higher', respectable nature of social humans is repressed and tame
- Jekyll is much bigger than Hyde. This is seen particularly when Hyde's small body is found in the much larger clothes of Dr Jekyll.
- The author is perhaps suggesting Hyde is a smaller part of Jekyll, but that if people repress the bad in them it will take over and destroy them.
- Hyde is younger and more energetic than Jekyll. This suggests evil is something that develops later in life, after a period of childhood innocence.
- The names Jekyll and Hyde
- The two names seem to have a double meaning.
- The two syllables of Jekyll's name (Je and kyll) perhaps mean 'I kill' ( Je is the French for I).
- In the last chapter, Jekyll describes how he tried to get rid of (kill) the Hyde in him.
- Hyde spelled as 'hide' suggests something hidden from view, or the rough skin of an animal.
- Jekyll is in some way trying to kill the hidden Hyde and his animal nature.
- The law and unexplained
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