Many texts give us compelling insights into man and society, helping us understand the relationship between texts and the context wherein they are composed. The period and culture that texts are composed in has an immense influence on the outcome of the story. The main themes in a story are a reflection of the social class and the beliefs of the society that the author lived in when writing it. Robert Louis Stevenson explores the idea of the duality of mankind, ethics and morality in his novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson explores the idea of the internal struggle every man has between good and evil and the inclination man has for immoral behaviour. It also conveys to the readers the importance of reputation and class
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Steven Moffat’s re-imaging of the tale takes the same ideas and twists them to take on more modern concepts. The BBC miniseries, Jekyll, still conveys the themes of the dual nature of man and good against evil. The dual nature of man is a constant fight between what is morally right and what isn’t. In the miniseries, the characters of Jekyll and Hyde have been recreated. The protagonist Tom Jackman is a family man, which differs from Stevenson’s Jekyll who isn’t portrayed with any family, only having his friends and servants. Unlike the original, Hyde isn’t the villain, he is the primal part of Jackman’s brain that controls basic human primitive instinct, the instinct to protect his loved ones. The villain is the shadowy corporation Klein and Utterson, which is a recreation of the character Utterson, whose role was to control the spreading of the information about Jekyll. While Stevenson’s story is about the dangers of duality to man, Moffat’s begins to give us the idea that both sides are needed to survive the modern society. Jekyll suggest that Hyde, who represents love, is a solution to this evil. The series propose that Hyde is more than Jackman’s ‘dark-side’. They don’t share memories and Hyde only started manifesting months before the show takes place. Hyde is still only …show more content…
This then helps us broaden our understanding of the relationship between the texts and the context wherein they are composed. Stevenson’s novella explores the concept of the dual nature of man and the internal struggle every man has between the two. It also conveys the lack of voice in Victorian society and the importance of reputation and class. Moffat’s adaptation of the novella keeps the same concepts, the duality of man and society, and changes them to relate more to modern readers (or watches). However instead of implying the struggle between the two sides of man, as Stevenson does in his novella, Moffat suggests that the dual nature of man is necessary to survive the modern society. He also highlights the corporate greed of the modern world and the lack of privacy and trust given to society. Comparing these two texts side by side we are given an understanding into the influence the era, where they were composed, has on the text
Steven Moffat’s re-imaging of the tale takes the same ideas and twists them to take on more modern concepts. The BBC miniseries, Jekyll, still conveys the themes of the dual nature of man and good against evil. The dual nature of man is a constant fight between what is morally right and what isn’t. In the miniseries, the characters of Jekyll and Hyde have been recreated. The protagonist Tom Jackman is a family man, which differs from Stevenson’s Jekyll who isn’t portrayed with any family, only having his friends and servants. Unlike the original, Hyde isn’t the villain, he is the primal part of Jackman’s brain that controls basic human primitive instinct, the instinct to protect his loved ones. The villain is the shadowy corporation Klein and Utterson, which is a recreation of the character Utterson, whose role was to control the spreading of the information about Jekyll. While Stevenson’s story is about the dangers of duality to man, Moffat’s begins to give us the idea that both sides are needed to survive the modern society. Jekyll suggest that Hyde, who represents love, is a solution to this evil. The series propose that Hyde is more than Jackman’s ‘dark-side’. They don’t share memories and Hyde only started manifesting months before the show takes place. Hyde is still only …show more content…
This then helps us broaden our understanding of the relationship between the texts and the context wherein they are composed. Stevenson’s novella explores the concept of the dual nature of man and the internal struggle every man has between the two. It also conveys the lack of voice in Victorian society and the importance of reputation and class. Moffat’s adaptation of the novella keeps the same concepts, the duality of man and society, and changes them to relate more to modern readers (or watches). However instead of implying the struggle between the two sides of man, as Stevenson does in his novella, Moffat suggests that the dual nature of man is necessary to survive the modern society. He also highlights the corporate greed of the modern world and the lack of privacy and trust given to society. Comparing these two texts side by side we are given an understanding into the influence the era, where they were composed, has on the text