Compare And Contrast Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

“We’ve all got both light and dark inside of us. What matters is the side we choose to act on, that’s who we really are,” Sirius Black. In the book Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written by Robert Louis Stevenson, Jekyll tries to separate himself into two versions- good and evil. This book can be easily put into the category that states good and evil lives in all of us and the struggle we find naturally with the two sides. Jekyll battles the two, until he finds that the evil he found inside him, Mr. Hyde, has become stronger than the good. When Hyde is found dead it shows that there was a weakness in the evil. The question to ask is whether you can separate the two from each other. Other people believe that you can separate the good
As he discovers that man is not one person, but two. Jekyll believes that if “each could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable, the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspiration and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure” (61). This is what Jekyll believes the world would be if you could separate the two identities. He begins to want to separate the evil from himself and using potion that he created himself he was able to do so. Jekyll knows that he risked death because any drug that could control the fortress of identity, but the temptation he was facing for a discovery took away all his worries. He drank the potion and the evil inside him arose, therefore the birth of Mr. Edward Hyde. After Jekyll sees that he can become Hyde by drinking a potion, he starts to like being able to use his new power. While writing his confession letter to Utterson he continues to explain how he found it humorous at the time, until he finds that his new power does not contain all the good he thought. Jekyll writes, “ It was on this side that my new power tempted me until I fell into slavery,” (65). When Jekyll writes that his new power tempted him into slavery, he starts to realize that
Jekyll thinks that since everyone thinks that Hyde is a separate person, he can get away with using the evil inside of him. Jekyll writes about how he, “mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that he was suddenly, in the top fit of my dilium, struck through my heart by a cold thrill of terror,” (71). Jekyll was writing about how he felt when Hyde was committing murder. At first he felt nothing, then all of the sudden he felt the evil inside him. He knew that what was going on needed to be stopped. He knew that Hyde was becoming who he was a person. After Jekyll was starting to realize that Hyde was becoming who he was as person, Jekyll refused to use the evil inside him anymore, He explained how he, “locked the door that he had so often gone and come, and ground the key under my heel,” (72). Jekyll does not want Hyde to be able to get the freedom that he had been getting because he knows now that Hyde was becoming who Jekyll was as a person, and Jekyll was done with Hyde controlling him. He locked the cabinet with the potion and broke the key. Jekyll was still struggling with keeping the evil away from the good. He had already broken the key to the cabinet and locked away the potion and yet Jekyll still wrote, “ the measure was filled at last; and this brief condescension to my evil finally destroyed the balance of