Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll

The entirety of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is concerned with the duality of the character Dr. Jekyll, and the gruesome actions which Mr. Hyde commits while he exists.  However, towards the end of the novel the true nature of their relationship is revealed, as it was inferred that Dr. Jekyll’s potion created this evil Mr. Hyde out of seemingly thin air, as Dr. Jekyll seemed like a normal, well to do man.  In actuality, Mr. Hyde is not simply the antithesis to the goodness of Dr. Jekyll, he is the manifestation of the darkness that lurks within Jekyll, and serves as an outlet for Jekyll’s inborn evil.  Dr. Jekyll makes a rather interesting assertion in his final letter to Mr. Utterson, suggesting that not only himself has this evil within him, but that all people are born with two sides, saying that “man is not truly one, but truly two.”  This suggestion reveals the theme of the work as a whole by saying that all people must balance the good and the bad within themselves, and, as is the case with Dr. Jekyll, if one allows their evil side to indulge too much, that it will ultimately usurp the goodness inside us all.  It’s also interesting to note that for whatever evil Mr. Hyde did in his time, Dr. Jekyll embodied all that was good in him as his other side had an outlet for its urges, and every time he regained control of his body he tried to fix the damage he had previously done.  All-in-all it seems like rather the social commentary Stevenson is trying to make about the nature of humanity, yet really its nothing that ground breaking.  Be evil a lot, and eventually you become evil.  Though it is sort of interesting saying that people are both good and evil, it is simply the combination of the two that makes people people.