Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde

The first scene consists of Mr. Richard Enfield's and Mr. Utterson walking along a street in London.

Mr. Enfield has a recollection of a previous incident in which he witnessed an extremely unpleasant man

trampling upon a small screaming girl while this man was running somewhere. A large crowd had gathered

around and they saw the man, Edward Hyde. The crowd forced the man to give money to this girl for

trampling over her. Hyde did not run over her for any reason. He just did it out of spite and evil. He

represents all the evil in the world. The reaction of others to him is one of horror because while looking at

him, others feel a desire to strike out at him and kill him. His physical appearance brings out the worst evil

in other people. Since Hyde represents evil, he is symbolically represented as being much smaller than Dr.

Jekyll.

I believe Dr. Jekyll created Hyde because he had a theory that man has a good side and a bad side.

While investigating this, he developed a potion that could release the evil in a person in the form of a

totally different person. Then this person could commit any evil act it wanted, and then drink the potion to

return back to normal. The only problem with this is the fact that he drank this potion so many times that he

was no longer able to control this process. He was unable to transform back into Dr. Jekyll.

Another example of Hyde's evil is in the killing of Sir Danvers Carew. Sir Danvers appears to have

been killed for no apparent reason. The murder of Sir Danvers was seen by a maid who was working

nearby. She states that Hyde meet with a man in the street. After the two exchanged words, Mr. Hyde

lifted his heavy walking stick and clubbed the old man to death. This tells us the reader that Mr. Hyde has

grown in fury. From trampling over a child in the first scene, he now commits murder for no reason. I

believe Hyde killed Sir Danvers because Sir Danvers was described as being a peaceful and good man.

Hyde represents pure evil, so naturally he would hate good gentlemen. The only reason why Sir Danvers

dies, was because he was a good man. He not only killed Sir Danvers', he had to trample over him. The

goodness of Sir Danvers brings out the most intense evil in Hyde.

From the source "Selves and Shadows" we receive an indepth look into the novel. David Hume asks

the question, "Would any man, who is walking along, tread as willingly on another's gouty