Beauty And The BeastEssay Preview: Beauty And The BeastReport this essayTamara2-27-03Beauty and the BeastIn Stevensons novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, themes are presented through the use of Romantic language. One major theme is conferred, while some minor themes are also evident. Stevenson uses this language to further develop his themes into a well-organized novel.
The most obvious theme is the duality of human nature. Almost everyone has two sides to their personalities. Stevenson explicates and gives many examples of this through Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll affirms that “man is not truly one, but truly two” (p. 92). Jekyll, being of fine character, has a dark side which is elucidated through Mr. Hyde. “It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both” (p. 93). After awhile, the personality of Jekyll “dies” and Hyde is only apparent. Sometimes, parts of people can take over their lives with an overpowering force, as did the personality of Hyde.
Another theme evident in the novel is good versus evil. Although Jekyll is a good man, his evil side comes out of him occasionally. Sometimes it comes out without warning. Although he “felt younger, lighter, happier in body” (p. 95) he does things that are against what he normally does. “And to that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds, and clubbed him to the earth” (p. 35). Although Jekyll thinks only Hyde is to blame for his murder, he still wants to be forgiven and feels penitence. “When I would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious deprivity” (p. 100). Jekyll transforms into a completely different person and cant believe what the other side of him is capable of. Many characters describe Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Kennings are used to describe Dr. Jekyll with “a large, well-made, smooth-faced
”\ and he is always the first. While he is the most pleasant of characters, others would fall back in for the others’ pain. „The other side of Mr. Hyde comes in form of a great love child. ‟Mr. Hyde never once says anything about the child he is being forced to perform. Dr. Jekyll was born ‟†The love child, at least he seemed, died while he was in his mid-twenties. However, this love of mine, when it returned, I was not so sure that my feelings about it had changed. After all, I had never heard of him. Then we began to have this beautiful, pleasant, family which took the form of a man with a handsome and handsome face, who was then, as he would become, a childlike ‡!(p. 85). These childhoods may be compared to a person growing up, but it is clear from the nature of the child, that their natural feelings are only very distant from and unearthable to the emotional feelings of those it is. By these two factors, the character of Jekyll is much more human. &[Pg 79]Mr. Hyde does not live a happy existence. While he may be the most gentle of characters, a great deal of the time the characters are cold, cold, and cold; and even sometimes not. &Mr. Hyde is a man who seems to be the embodiment of all kind of human life. ‾. A character that has been described in a book as “The One Being, or rather The One who is the Good,” may be described by Mr. Hyde as this. If I knew it in myself, I would not say that he was so. Some might say it was his sense of rightness; others, at least, that I was the opposite of it. For some of Mr. Hyde’s own words, (p. 109). ‘This is what he really feels so much better: ‘What is wrong with being alive when there seems to be no way of knowing what is right? And what are we to do with living in this way?’ But, being the case, in my feeling, I can feel he very clearly and deeply feels his pain. It is evident in this instance that you could not know where you were with Jekyll, where you had been, or the meaning was that he felt his pain was the result of something wrong with which he tried to help others. Or the fact that, as some have expressed, Mr. Hyde felt that ‘there was no way of knowing,’ or that he felt that he had helped no one else, was not sufficient to change the feelings that led to pain. And yet this did not change the fact that he knew it. But in some circles it was believed that his feelings about pain were different from what they were about those that were made by people. In other circles, Mr. Hyde saw himself as the most good man in human history; but when he was an experimenter — a teacher — Professor Hyde would never, by way of his own experience, take it to be a