Both the Jekyll and the Hyde live in us
The theme of the novel of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is about the duality of human nature. The foremost question from millions of years intellectual people have asked, if people are born good or evil, has been subtly responded by the author Robert Louis Stevenson in his novel ‘Jekyll and Hyde’. The author is able to show his readers that humans aren’t born inherently bad or good, they are born with both traits. He has brilliantly separated the good, Dr. Jekyll, and the bad, Mr. Hyde. In every human one of the traits can be overpowering. All through the novel it is hard to imagine Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde being the same person because of their stark differences. It is apparent that Mr. Hyde is full evil, but what isn’t as detectable is that, Dr. Jekyll, who is suppose to be completely good, has those devilish desires which can’t be fulfilled on his own. He knows that everything he feels isn’t right but innately there is a desire to find out about some of the wicked things he’s been told not to do his whole life. This leads to the creation of Mr. Hyde who releases the devilish instincts inside Dr. Jekyll.
There are people in the world, (you might be one) who had the most terrible childhoods: filled with abuse, neglect, bewilderment, and poverty of all kinds, but, they seem to have emerged as strong, capable people who find the good in life and have built on it. By virtue of their innate make-up of mind, they have grown as stronger human and have made the most of it. Though their childhood has been greatly impacted by the bad, they do not let the bad defeat them.
Then there are other people in the world those who had the best advantages in life, they had and have every luxury at their disposal. They are offered care, support, continuous opportunities, but they seem to do so little good with it. By virtue of their innate make-up, they are inclined toward doing what is bad. Their bad character defeats the good character in them.
Perhaps because of the battle between good and bad in our character, we get attracted to the opposite of what we are. Don’t we often see, a nice guy, falling for a nasty female? Could it be that a nice person gets attracted to a Hyde in the opposite person which challenges the Jekyll in him? The lust you feel for someone different not only adds an element in your life that was previously missing, but it also adds to the challenge of it all. It is certainly one explanation for why the sweetest of girls end up with the biggest jerks around. And, the good guys follow the devilish girls. The challenge of conquering the heart of someone very opposite than what a person is adds to the passion, which sometimes gets mistaken for love.
Edward Hyde is not a separate personality living in the body of Dr. Henry Jekyll. “Hyde” is Jekyll’s hidden personality, which acts on unspecified urges that would be unseemly for someone of his age and social standing in Victorian London. Jekyll does all of that bad work combination of sadism, sex, torture as Mr. Hyde. Jekyll did not create a potion to remove the evil parts of his nature. He made a potion that allowed him express his urges without feeling guilty and without any penalty of tarnishing his good name. That’s also why he names his alter ego “Hyde,” because Hyde is a disguise, to be worn and discarded when not required. An alter ego is subconsciously a person’s second self, which is believed to be distinct from a person’s normal or original personality.
This novel is able to explain why good people do bad things. Even the best people want to know how far they can push their boundaries and what they can get away with. The creation of Mr. Hyde was Jekyll’s way of doing the bad things; Jekyll disguises as Hyde and releases his inner demons. I think to find an all-good human is an illusion. Therefore, Jekyll says at one point “man is not truly one, but truly two.” This dialogue of Dr. Jekyll clearly defines that there are two personalities inside of people and we need the one to balance out the other.
In Dr. Jekyll’s case, there is too much good, he feels responsible for all his actions and he knows exactly what is right and what is wrong. He always does the socially acceptable thing and never strays away from that. With Mr. Hyde it is the opposite, he is filled with bad and does everything wrong. He experiences great joy when doing the wrong thing. Eventually the bad starts to take over and this is when Jekyll realizes how wrong his experiment was. He becomes aware that good and bad balance each other out. Being too good isn’t always the best option, without a little bad life gets boring, which is why he wanted to create an alter ego. There has to be good to balance the bad and vice versa.
We see bad people doing more charity than the good ones in society, which is called “tainted altruism.” The self-centered bad people do good work to get rid of their acts. They do charitable acts for their personal benefits. The world looks at such people disapprovingly.
It’s really boring to be good all the times. Doing all good work, being morally always right, showing good manners forever, being honest and constantly doing the best – all of this might drive a person mad….once in a while subconsciously his/her “Hyde” shows up. Dr. Jekyll admits that one of his flaws is tendency to be the best. Too much of good in a person challenges the wild child in him.
In the 1941 movie starring Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, and Lana Turner Dr. Jekyll’s (Spencer Tracy) experience teaches him how evil Hyde can be: he rapes Ivy Pearson (Ingrid Bergman), who earlier expressed interest in Jekyll. Meanwhile, Jekyll is preparing to marry Beatrix Emery (Lana Turner). Over the course of the film, Hyde abuses Ivy. Feeling remorse over the treatment imposed on Ivy, Jekyll vows to never take the serum again; he destroys the key to his lab, and sends money to Ivy anonymously. You should watch the movie for the par excellence performance of the three actors.
In Bollywood a direct adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde story is a 1981 movie ‘Chehre Pe Chehra’ starring Sanjeev Kumar, tells the story of Dr. Wilson (Sanjeev Kumar) who is a workaholic scientist who feels that every human-being has an element of being an angel as well as an element of being a devil in him. That’s why sometimes even good person becomes satanic in his behavior whereas sometimes, a wicked one also becomes compassionate. He firmly believes that these two elements remain intermixed in an individual’s personality. He tries to segregate the both personalities for which he invents a medicine to eliminate the wicked or the undesirable element, thereby leaving only the desirable or the angelic element intact. He works hard on his theory and remains busy in inventing a potion to put his theory into effect. The trouble comes when he experiments his invention on himself only. Alas, the result is quite contrary to what he had theorized. His wicked persona gets segregated from the good one but turns out be stronger than its counterpart and he is not able to eliminate it.
No one is completely evil and no one can be good at all the time. We are humans and it’s normal to have both sides in us. I think we call somebody good who knows how to control the evil instincts in him. That’s all about it.
