Similarities Between Dracula And Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

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Anywhere you look, you are looking at evil. You might not think so, many people may seem wholly good, but everyone has evil in them. You might not see it right now, but trust me, it’s there, lurking in the shadows. This is, at least, what Bram Stoker, the writer of Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the writer of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, want you to believe through their characters of Dracula and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, respectively. These characters use their supernatural abilities to disrupt peace and cause hardship throughout their eponymous works. Both of these novels teach that good and evil are constantly vying for control both in our lives and in the environment around us, but they portray that concept differently. …show more content…
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde differ in the main conflict that exists between characters, they both use supernatural elements to increase the disparity between the good and evil elements. One of the reasons that Count Dracula, in Dracula, is still animate after hundreds of years, excluding the magic inherent to vampirism, is that he has many magical powers. Stoker writes, “He has the strength of many of his hand[:] ... he can transform himself to wolf[,] … he can be as bat[,] … he can come in mist which he create[,] … he [can] become so small[,]… [h]e can, when once he find his way, come out from anything or into anything[, and] ... he can see in the dark” (Stoker, 258). Dracula uses these abilities in his pursuit of his victims; after he is initially invited into a personal space, he can freely return at his leisure, since he can fly, turn into a magical mist, and squeeze into the thinnest of gaps. Of course, the human characters have none of these advantages. Likewise, Jekyll and Hyde requires supernatural circumstances to create most of its conflict. The characters of Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both share the same form and, as such, cannot both exist at the same time to directly conflict. Eventually, the transition between the two forms, caused by a special salt, happens automatically, and Dr. Jekyll turns to Mr. Hyde whenever he tries to sleep. Stevenson writes, “At all hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory …show more content…
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson and Dracula by Bram Stoker both were written to show that there is evil throughout the world fighting for domination against good, even inside of us, they have some key differences in how they expand that idea. Firstly, the main conflict in Dracula is between vampires and living humans, while in Jekyll and Hyde, the main conflict is between the personality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, who occupy the same body. Secondly, the works use religion in different ways. In In Dracula, the main enemy, Dracula, is implied to be the embodiment of the source of all evil in Christian beliefs, the Devil. On the other hand, in Jekyll and Hyde, the Devil is only used as a measuring stick of evil on which Mr. Hyde is measured. Although they have these differences, both works employ supernatural elements to increase the magnitude of the conflict between the good and the evil. Although both works are fine examples of the Horror genre in the 19th century, Dracula, by Bram Stoker, incorporates and develops the qualities found in most Horror works better due to its longer length and its greater use of direct, person-vs-person,

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