Summary:
Discusses The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Provides a character analysis of both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Compares and contrasts the two men.
MR. HYDE
Mr. Hyde from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is the craziest character in the book. Mr. Hyde is a very small hunched over man with a disagreeable look to him. He is the type of person that nobody likes before they even talk to him. He has something wrong with the way he looks, but nobody can really tell what it is, he's just different. He is rarely seen on the streets, and he is a very mysterious person. He has an apartment, but he is hardly ever there. He does have very good taste though. He has very nice furniture in his rooms, and he also has a large selection of expensive wine. He is very displeasing to the eye, and he is often seen entering and exiting through the back door of Dr. Jekylls lab, but nobody knows that the door actually leads there. Mr.Hyde isn't a respectable man at all, and he doesn't have any friends. Hyde is seen one night going around a corner and he tramples a little girl. After she is up and ok he offers her family money for what he did which is totally out of character by looking at him. Then he is seen murdering Sir Danvers Carew. After that murder he disappears for two months. The next time that anyone sees Mr. Hyde is when they break into the lab to find Mr. Hyde dead on the floor, and Dr. Jekyll is gone. This is very odd, and there is a note that Mr. Hyde had left them This note explains that Hyde is Jekyll, and Jekyll is Hyde! Jekyll in all of his studies created a chemical solution that would change a person into their alter ego, or their evil side. For Dr. Jekyll it was Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll said he tried to do this for a good reason that by making someone have a pure evil side they would also have a pure good side. This wasn't true for Dr. Jekyll. He couldn't stay away from his evil side. He began to switch into Hyde without the chemicals, Hyde began to take him over, and he was out of control. By the end of the story he couldn't turn back into Jekyll. No matter what he tried he couldn't do it so the only way to get rid of Hyde was to kill him, but that also meant killing himself. So Hyde was found dead in the lab with no trace of Dr. Jekyll.
DR. JEKYLL
In the story of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" Dr. Jekyll is the most unlikely person to go crazy like he did. Dr. Jekyll is a doctor in his mid fifties with a very smooth face. He is a very kind and generous man. He was born into a rich family so from the start of his life he was destined to be a successful gentleman. Although in his younger years he was a very wild person and as he got older he began to hold that all in so that he could be a perfect respectable man. But, Dr. Jekyll is not so perfect. His life is going along fine until Mr. Utterson reads his will and finds that everything in Jekylls will is going to one man, Mr. Hyde. Utterson was very concerned because he had never met Mr. Hyde and he thought that Jekyll was being blackmailed. That's when Dr. Jekyll began to change a lot. He started to become very shady. He would always come and go through the back door of the lab, and it got so his butler wouldn't see him for days at a time. He put off his job and everything and started to worry a lot of the people close to him. It was very clear that Dr. Jekyll was going through some very big changes in his behavior. Uttersons theory of why he was acting like this was Mr. Hyde. He figured that Mr. Hyde had some kind of hold on him, and Dr. Jekyll couldn't be rid of him. When asked about it Jekylls reply was "I can be rid of Mr. Hyde whenever I want to." He said it as though Hyde was some kind of bad habit like smoking. Then Mr. Hyde killed Sir Danvers Carew. This was a big turning point for Dr. Jekyll. Hyde left him a note saying that he left but he was going to be fine. Then for two months Dr. Jekyll was back to his old self again. He was very happy, he went back to work, and he was to his old self of being a perfect gentlemen. Then he started to get shady again. He locked himself in his house and didn't talk to anyone. When Utterson stopped by Jekyll told him he was sick then a crazy look came onto his face and Jekyll closed the window and went back into the house. Then he locked himself into the lab. He communicated by using notes. After a while the notes stopped, and when the broke into the lab they saw Hydes dead body and Dr. Jekyll was nowhere to be seen.
This is the complete article, containing 861 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
