Scarica THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The strange case of dr Jekyll and mr. Hyde -PLOT→ Mr Utterson is a respectable London lawyer and friend to the brilliant scientist Dr Henry Jekyll. After relating a disturbing tale of a sinister man assaulting a small girl, Utterson begins to question the odd behaviour of his friend. He discovers a story so horrific that he can hardly believe it. In fact, his friend has created a potion able to release his evil side, Mr Hyde. These two beings are in a perpetual struggle; once Hyde is released, he achieves domination over the Jekyll aspect, so that the individual has only two choices. The man may choose a life of crime. Jekyll must eliminate Hyde, by killing him. Hence Jekyll's suicide is the final and only choice. -THE DOUBLE NATURE OF THE SETTING→ At that time London had a 'double' nature and reflected the hypocrisy of Victorian society: the respectable West End was in contrast with the appalling poverty of the East End slums. This ambivalence is reinforced by the symbolism of Jekyll's house, whose two façades represent the faces of the two opposed sides of the same man: the front of this house, used by the doctor, is fair, while the rear side, used by Hyde, is part of a sinister block of buildings, Most scenes take place at night: there is no natural daylight, but only the artificial lighting of Jekyll's house and of the nightmarish street lamps. The most important events are wrapped up in darkness and fog: when Hyde tramples over the child, it is three in the morning; the murder of a Member of Parliament, happens at night, as well as Jekyll/Hyde's suicide. -STYLE → Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has a multi-narrative structure, in which a complex series of points of view is presented. There are four narrators, Utterson, his distant relative Enfield, Dr Lanyon and finally Dr Jekyll himself. • Utterson has the role of a detective since he follows clues and draws hypotheses. • The other narrator, Dr Lanyon, a friend and a colleague of Dr Jekyll's as well as a great advocate of reason, is the first person to see his friend enact his transformation. he prefers to die rather than go On living in a world that he thinks has been turned upside down. • The last narrator is Jekyll himself, who speaks in the first person. His narrative and final confession takes up the last chapter -SOURCES→ This novel had its origin in a dream: Stevenson wrote down in his diary that he had dreamed of a man in a laboratory who had swallowed a drug and" turned into a different being. It was the Gothic aspect of this story that excited him, In the last decades of the 19th century several works depicted the double nature of Victorian society, with its antithetical values and sexual repression. -INFLUENCES AND INTERPRETATIONS→ Stevenson drew inspiration for the description of Hyde from Darwin's studies about man's kinship to the animal world. Hyde's small stature indicates that his body is not exercised; he is lame, 'deformed'; Lanyon calls him abnormal' but what this deformity consists of, nobody is able to say. Hyde may be both the primitive, the evolutionary forerunner of civilised man and the symbol of repressed psychological drives. Jekyll has, in fact, projected his hidden pleasures onto Hyde, which become part of his own being, so Dr Jekyll is as guilty as Mr Hyde. Thus, Jekyll is a kind of 'Victorian Faust -GOOD VS EVIL→ The novel is the portrayal of good and evil, As Jekyll has lived a virtuous life, his face is handsome, his hands are white and well-shaped, his body is larger and more harmoniously, proportioned than Hyde's. Hyde is pure hate and evil, he is pale and dwarfish, his hands are dark and hairy, he gives an impression of deformity, this fact points out how much smaller and uglier Hyde is than his alter ego. The smaller, slighter Hyde begins to grow in stature and the original balance of good and evil in Jekyll's nature is threatened with being permanently overthrown.
