The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! SYMBOLS IN The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Silence and isolation Two essential elements are silence and loneliness, that are predominant on several crucial occasions, originating the sensation that the events narrated in the novel are at the margins not only of the Victorian society, but also of human possibilities. Dr Jekyll’s house and other buildings Very interesting elements of the setting are the buildings, the streets and the passageways. The buildings, and the streets in which these are situated, reflect the true personality and psychology of their owners. Jekyll’s and Hyde’s houses are actually only one building, with two façades ( facciate ) and separated zones, connected with a back passage: Jekyll’s looks on a busy square, the other one on a small and dark side-street ( traversa ). Hyde’s house "was two storeys ( piani ) high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower storey which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker.     It is a very ruined building that represents the evil, decaying, repressed part of the doctor’s soul very well and becomes one of the principal emblems of his duality. Inside the house seems to have a better appearance, but this is only appearance.     A secret passage connects the two houses, in particular one of Hyde’s rooms with Jekyll’s laboratory. This passage is the symbolic transformation of the good and serious scientist into his evil twin and vice versa, stressing the exchange between their opposite values and visions of life: it shows that both of them are two different aspects of the same person. It looks like a passage between two worlds: the normal, everyday world of the doctor’s social life and the infernal abyss of Hyde’s hell, as well as a passage from the Ego to the Unconscious.      In an antithetical position, there is Jekyll’s house with a door characterised by “a great air of wealth and comfort" The cabinet’s door is made of a very heavy and good wood and is covered with red baize ( panno ), but the room simply contains few dark closets ( armadi ).  According to the critics the house is the metaphor for the split and chaotic self and the two doors are an indication of the contradictions within the man. ( and Victorian society as well ) The key to Mr Hyde’s house A suggestive image is the key that Jekyll uses as Hyde to enter the house in Soho. In the novel, for Jekyll, the opening of a door means the transformation into his evil alter ego again. So the destruction of this key has the symbolic meaning of rejecting Hyde for ever or at least keeping him secluded in order to avoid new accidents. To shut a door to somebody, instead, means the removal of someone from the doctor’s life, as Jekyll does with his friend Utterson, the lawyer, when the scientist decides to isolate himself in his study. The weather The weather is an important element which influences the background of the story and highlights the sense of fear, mystery and unknown dominating the novel. It was a "black winter morning" when Hyde crushed an innocent child; the moment when he overstepped his utmost limits ( oltrpassò i suoi limiti estremi), killing Sir Danvers Carew, "it was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon,…”. In- house, dangerous scenes are usually set in the dark, except for the light of the moon and of some candles. Apart from clouds and wind, the novel is dominated by the presence of mist and fog. Fog is accompanied by cold and sometimes by "frost in the air" conveying the sense of inner solitude and becoming symbols of the emotional ‘coldness’ of some characters, who can actually communicate sincerely only after death. The continuous occurrence of these unpleasant natural elements throughout the book hints at ( allude a ) the obscure secret that will become clear at the end of the novel, underlining Dr Jekyll’s psychological and spiritual loss. Names Even the names of some of the protagonists can be interpreted as a symbolic description of their nature. Dr Henry Jekyll has a particular surname which can be considered as the union of two words from English and French, that Stevenson spoke fluently. It is the combination of the French ‘Je’, meaning ‘I’, and the verb ‘kill’: this hints at the process of self-destruction started by the researcher, as he cannot accept his complex personality. The evil side of his soul is called Hyde = ‘hide’, because it is something, not someone, that should be kept hidden to the more respectable side of the Victorian society that, with its strongly moralistic trends, would have censured him. Finally Dr Hastie Lanyon is really ‘hasty’ ( frettoloso ), too quick and