The book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, written by Robert Louis Stevenson, talks about a gothic mystery on the sudden death of Carew and murder of Dr. Jekyll. A new case is reported and sent to Mr. Utterson. One day he finds that his dear friend, Dr. Jekyll, gives all his properties to Mr. Hyde. From his name it is pretty evident that he loves to hide and is not a person easy to find. Not recalling to ever hear that name in any talks, he is curious to find out who he is. Based upon how his attitude is, he predicts that he is not a good person. Dr. Jekyll creates a potion to turn into Mr. Hyde. It turned out to be successful. As Mr. Hyde he committed many crimes, but once his time was running out, he realized that the real Mr. Hyde may get into trouble. When Mr. Hyde found out, he killed Dr. Jekyll, and wore Dr. Jekyll’s clothes. Then committed suicide himself.
This book shows the importance of human nature, good or evil. Good and evil can’t be defined by one or two actions you have done in your life but the many compiled together to make who you are. This book happens to have the mood of gothic in it. This indicates the darkness and evilness of human nature. When we think of gothicism, it reminds us of dark and evil and this is what is showcased in the book. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Mr. Hyde is clear to be the evil one but Dr. Jekyll switches on and off. Internally, everyone has an angel and a devil, but it depends on us to choose which one to use in our everyday lives. Mr. Hyde loves dark and evil, which pushes him to perform evil actions. He killed Dr. Jekyll and committed suicide himself. On the other hand, Dr. Jekyll isn’t evil, like Mr. Hyde, but sometimes he does actions without thinking. He always conducts ambitious experiments that are extremely dangerous. In his potion to transform into Hyde, he committed many crimes and wondered if the real Hyde would have to pay for it. However, he is also very kind sometimes as well. Before when Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll were good friends, Dr. Jekyll wrote in his will to give everything to Mr. Hyde, which shows that he is a good person as well. We were born with both sides of good and bad, but it depends which one we decide to show.
A true friendship is more crucial than anything. Friends are significant in our lives because when we are in trouble they are there for us. This is what a true friend is. Mr. Utterson is a true friend of Dr. Jekyll. When it is revealed that dr. Jekyll wrote in his will to give all his properties to Mr. Hyde when he is dead, Mr. Utterson is shocked, but is more curious to find out what is so “special” about this Mr. Hyde. There was a bit of jealousy in him, but most of it was curiosity. Mr. Utterson never heard of Dr. Jekyll ever bring up a Mr. Hyde, so it was up to him to find out. Mr. Hyde also never heard of Mr. Utterson during all his conversation with Dr. Jekyll. Mr. Utterson knew that Mr. Hyde wasn’t a good person and tried to solve the mystery. True friends will not ever take advantage of you for any reason and will always stand by you in every situation.
Reputation and influences are always valuable in life. People can change based upon new influences and new energy in ourselves, but sometimes others will view us the same from our past based upon our “reputation”. Mr. Hyde must have some good inside him, and even if he changed, many people still would view him as evil because he already built his reputation to be evil. Similarly if a really great and excellent person like Dr. Jekyll suddenly turned evil, no one would believe that. Our reputation takes a long time to build it, but it can take really quick to ruin it. Just like what Warren Buffett said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.” However, a reputation doesn’t make our lives, the character internally is still more important than what others think of you as.
Unlike many authors, Robert Louis Stevenson made the character’s name predict what happens to them and sometimes it is just complete irony. Mr. Hyde’s name is pretty obvious because he likes to hide and Dr. Jekyll’s name sounds like “geek” and he gets killed. However, names like Mr. Hastie Lanyon is completely the opposite. He in fact is pretty slow. These names can let us, readers, foreshadow what will happen in the book just from the character names. Foreshadowing is predicting what will happen next from the information we currently have. This is very important because it sets up the plot of the book.
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