I found it interesting that Dr. Jekyall was also Mr. Hyde, and he created Hyde in order to get rid of the evil inside of him. Too bad Dr. Jekyall’s experiment somewhat backfired on him and he eventually died in the end. However, I think it was his own fault in the first place, since he experimented on himself and there was not a guarantee that the separation of the evil in him would transform into another person. Even though there were advancements in medicine and science at that time separating one person into two people sounds more like magic to me, but I guess the British had no clue what science was capable of at that time. I believe that the British might have thought that separating yourself into two people was a good idea because they were eager to get rid of the bad people and people who they thought were lower than them.
Again, this story made me dislike the British of that time even more, even though the opinions of the British were not expressly stated, they are evident throughout the story. This is shown in the beginning because Hyde is described as being pale and dwarfish, and also giving the impression of deformity. Also, at one point Mr. Enfield said that there was something detestable about him. Hyde shows that the people in Britain at that time thought of evil as ugly and deformed.
Even though Mr. Utterson is telling the story, he is only a spectator to what is really happening. This really gives the story an unbiased point of view because he does not exactly know what is happening but he gathers information to piece together the mystery of Dr. Jekyall. I found the use of written documents very useful in this story because it shows the proof that the readers or the characters might not believe in what is happening if the story was told by Jekyall or Mr. Hyde. It makes a lot of since that Mr. Utterson is a lawyer since he is gathering all of the facts and presenting them in the story like a case.
Discussion Questions:
If the story was told by alternating the perspectives of Jekyall and Hyde would it have been as believable as Mr. Utterson’s point of view?
Do you think that Jekyall really needed to use himself as a test subject to see if the experiment was truly a success or should/could he have used some type of animal test subject first?
No, I dont think it would have been as believable from Mr. Utterson's point of view because he is a more credible character. I think Dr. Jekyll used himself because he said he always felt he was living a double life and he wanted to make it so he could have it both ways.
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