Themes In Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde By Robert Louis Stevenson

In my short story, my aim was to focus on two of the main themes from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; trouble caused by experiments and elements of dual personality. The story focuses on the protagonist, Charles, who is similar to Dr Jekyll in many ways. He is portrayed as a troubled scientist who chooses to experiment on animals even though it could potentially cause him to lose his wife, which at the end of the story he dramatically does. I attempted to capture lots of emotion, which Stevenson doesn’t do in ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ but tried to capture the same tense atmosphere that Stevenson does by using flashbacks, letters and lots of adjectives and long sentences. Furthermore, I employed some of the same techniques as Stevenson such as explaining …show more content…
The use of this technique made the story more interesting to read because it had sophisticated adjectives that the reader wouldn’t get bored with. When the protagonist was having a flashback to his wedding day he described his wife as having a ‘breath-taking smile’ and that he had seen her every day for the past 9 years of his life but on his wedding day her beauty took ‘every molecule of oxygen out of his body and left him gasping for air’. This phrase was powerful, setting the atmosphere for the story; love story gone wrong. This quote suggests to the reader how much the main character loves his wife; it provides our imaginations an image of an extremely beautiful woman. The adjective ‘breath-taking’ and the development of this when he says ‘her beauty took every molecule of oxygen out of my body’ suggests that this woman is incredibly beautiful and has complete hold of the protagonist’s heart. Also, when the main character said that his heart ‘swelled’ when she put his wedding ring on her finger, it used the technique of metaphors. An example of Stevenson using sophisticated vocabulary was when he used ‘hithertopyly’ instead of however. By using this word instead of however it essentially ‘mixed things up’ and made the vocabulary choices more exciting; he didn’t use the same thing all the time.

In conclusion, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was a very good book which incorporated a plethora of different techniques to make the writing of it so excellent. My story also incorporated some of these techniques however I must say that my short story could never be as good as anything Stevenson has written, my story included one simile and if I had the chance to improve it I would add more. Robert Louis Stevenson is a fantastic writer and it was an honour to study his work and write in the style of