In the story, “The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson, the element of moral ambiguity appears through Dr. Jekyll and his experimentations. Dr. Jekyll lives in an era known as the Victorian Era, in which there are many strict rules and social constraints. By the demands that he should be good all the time, Dr. Jekyll creates a potion to separate his personalities. The separation creates Mr. Hyde, his alter ego, who represents the darker side of Dr. Jekyll, exhibiting and representing Dr. Jekyll’s hidden evil tendencies throughout the story. Dr. Jekyll can be deemed as morally ambiguous because Mr. Hyde and him are ultimately the same individual, proving that no matter how much he wants to be good, his evil tendencies
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Within Dr. Jekyll are two personalities that clash constantly and battle for existence, those of which represent good and bad. From Dr. Jekyll’s perspective himself, he is nowhere near a morally ambiguous person as he is a good and dutiful citizen. However, what lies underneath is Mr. Hyde, who represents Jekyll’s hidden desire to defy society’s social constraints and indulgence in his darker side. In his narrative of the story, Dr. Jekyll states, “Both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.”(42). Dr. Jekyll’s acknowledges that both sides of him, evil and good, indeed exist in equal parts. No matter if he is Dr, Jekyll or Mr. Hyde, the existence of his darker side and its evil desires still plagues him. Dr. Jekyll’s expresses guilt and shame, conveying that his morals are still intact and he feels no pleasure from being Mr. Hyde although he cannot control himself from doing so. Dr. Jekyll also comments, “Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old …show more content…
The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.”(45). Objectively, his experiment succeeds. He is able to separate the two personalities from himself in the hopes that he would soon be able to be only good and destroy his darker personality forever. However, this backfires as the experiment creates an uncontrollable alter-ego who proves to be harmful to society through the murder of Mr. Carew. The conflict of morality comes into play because Dr. Jekyll’s experiment originally plans to be a step forward in the creation of morally perfect beings, but also creates a vile being deep inside in expense of the benefit of being good. Dr. Jekyll’s original intentions are to benefit himself and eventually society, however, the results of his actions bear consequences regardless of intent, those of which outweigh the good he proposes to make. When Dr. Jekyll receives news of the murder, he points out, “...the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was a man high in public estimation. It
Within Dr. Jekyll are two personalities that clash constantly and battle for existence, those of which represent good and bad. From Dr. Jekyll’s perspective himself, he is nowhere near a morally ambiguous person as he is a good and dutiful citizen. However, what lies underneath is Mr. Hyde, who represents Jekyll’s hidden desire to defy society’s social constraints and indulgence in his darker side. In his narrative of the story, Dr. Jekyll states, “Both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.”(42). Dr. Jekyll’s acknowledges that both sides of him, evil and good, indeed exist in equal parts. No matter if he is Dr, Jekyll or Mr. Hyde, the existence of his darker side and its evil desires still plagues him. Dr. Jekyll’s expresses guilt and shame, conveying that his morals are still intact and he feels no pleasure from being Mr. Hyde although he cannot control himself from doing so. Dr. Jekyll also comments, “Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old …show more content…
The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.”(45). Objectively, his experiment succeeds. He is able to separate the two personalities from himself in the hopes that he would soon be able to be only good and destroy his darker personality forever. However, this backfires as the experiment creates an uncontrollable alter-ego who proves to be harmful to society through the murder of Mr. Carew. The conflict of morality comes into play because Dr. Jekyll’s experiment originally plans to be a step forward in the creation of morally perfect beings, but also creates a vile being deep inside in expense of the benefit of being good. Dr. Jekyll’s original intentions are to benefit himself and eventually society, however, the results of his actions bear consequences regardless of intent, those of which outweigh the good he proposes to make. When Dr. Jekyll receives news of the murder, he points out, “...the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was a man high in public estimation. It