Literary Foils in British Literature British Literature contains literary foils. Foils serve as a contrast to the characters. Foils are usually the antagonists and protagonists of stories. Literary foils are evident throughout British literature in the stories of Beowulf, Julius Caesar, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Foils exist in the epic Beowulf. Beowulf is written by an unknown author and is translated by Burton Raffel in the Anglo-Saxon era. There is a force, vitality, clearness and distinctiveness in the characters, not only in Beowulf’s personality, but in all the other personalities (Brooke). Beowulf and Grendal are very contrasting characters because of their distinct personalities. Beowulf is a famous soldier's son “My father / was
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His play Julius Caesar contains a two-fold foil in it. Brutus is a foil to Anthony and Cassius. Cassius and Brutus conspire to kill Caesar, but Cassius is more prone to treachery than Brutus. This gives Cassius evil ambition. Brutus is a bit more hesitant to join the plot against Caesar. Brutus is a well-respected senator, who is approached by Cassius and informed of the plot. He deliberates over whether to become involved in the conspiracy (Moss). This deliberation separates him from Cassius. Brutus’s honesty and simplicity are also in clear contrast to Antony’s qualities of deception and over-ambition. Cassius believes that the nobility of Rome are responsible for the government of Rome. They have allowed a man to gain excessive power; therefore, they have the responsibility to stop him, and with a man of Caesar’s well-known ambition, that can only mean assassination (Perry). If Caesar were wholly the bloody tyrant, there would be little cause for Brutus’s hesitation and no jurisdiction for Antony’s thirst for revenge (Perry). Brutus’s hesitation compared to Cassius ambition creates a foil. This two-fold foil is one of the most obvious foils in …show more content…
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jekyll creates Hyde by a series of experiments in order to prove his statement that man is not truly one, but truly two. He means that the human soul is a mixture of good and evil. This means every man’s foil is within himself. Hyde is a manifestation of the evil that lives inside an otherwise honorable Dr. Jekyll. Therefore, Dr. Jekyll creates his own foil by separating his identity. Another foil is Dr. Jekyll and Lanyon. Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Lanyon are both scientists, but their foil is found within their difference in beliefs of science. “But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me… such unscientific balderdash” (Stevenson). Dr. Lanyon is being a skeptic, expressing his opinion on Dr. Jekyll’s embrace of mysticism. Mr. Utterson also comments “they have only differed on some point of science” (Stevenson). In the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde foil, Dr. Jekyll is a prominent, popular London scientist, who is well known for his dinner parties, and a large handsome man of perhaps fifty. He owns a large estate and has recently drawn up his will, leaving his immense fortune to a man that Jekyll’s Lawyer, Utterson, thoroughly disapproves of (Roberts). Dr. Jekyll is largely known and respected unlike Hyde who people react with horror to. Hyde actually represents the embodiment of pure evil merely for the sake of evil. He has been seen running over a
His play Julius Caesar contains a two-fold foil in it. Brutus is a foil to Anthony and Cassius. Cassius and Brutus conspire to kill Caesar, but Cassius is more prone to treachery than Brutus. This gives Cassius evil ambition. Brutus is a bit more hesitant to join the plot against Caesar. Brutus is a well-respected senator, who is approached by Cassius and informed of the plot. He deliberates over whether to become involved in the conspiracy (Moss). This deliberation separates him from Cassius. Brutus’s honesty and simplicity are also in clear contrast to Antony’s qualities of deception and over-ambition. Cassius believes that the nobility of Rome are responsible for the government of Rome. They have allowed a man to gain excessive power; therefore, they have the responsibility to stop him, and with a man of Caesar’s well-known ambition, that can only mean assassination (Perry). If Caesar were wholly the bloody tyrant, there would be little cause for Brutus’s hesitation and no jurisdiction for Antony’s thirst for revenge (Perry). Brutus’s hesitation compared to Cassius ambition creates a foil. This two-fold foil is one of the most obvious foils in …show more content…
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jekyll creates Hyde by a series of experiments in order to prove his statement that man is not truly one, but truly two. He means that the human soul is a mixture of good and evil. This means every man’s foil is within himself. Hyde is a manifestation of the evil that lives inside an otherwise honorable Dr. Jekyll. Therefore, Dr. Jekyll creates his own foil by separating his identity. Another foil is Dr. Jekyll and Lanyon. Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Lanyon are both scientists, but their foil is found within their difference in beliefs of science. “But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me… such unscientific balderdash” (Stevenson). Dr. Lanyon is being a skeptic, expressing his opinion on Dr. Jekyll’s embrace of mysticism. Mr. Utterson also comments “they have only differed on some point of science” (Stevenson). In the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde foil, Dr. Jekyll is a prominent, popular London scientist, who is well known for his dinner parties, and a large handsome man of perhaps fifty. He owns a large estate and has recently drawn up his will, leaving his immense fortune to a man that Jekyll’s Lawyer, Utterson, thoroughly disapproves of (Roberts). Dr. Jekyll is largely known and respected unlike Hyde who people react with horror to. Hyde actually represents the embodiment of pure evil merely for the sake of evil. He has been seen running over a