Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; A Master-class in morality.
I just finished reading the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which is one of my all-time favourite books. The story is more than well-known: A scientist develops a formula which turns him into an evil version of himself.
That is essentially the plot; however the main character is actually a friend of Dr Jekyll, a dusty old lawyer called Mr Utterson who finds himself investigating the relationship between Hyde and the Dr.
That is where the story changes from that which people expect because when coming across this book for the first time it is fair to assume that the reader (myself included) expects to read a story all about the transformation from good to evil in Mr Hyde and the foulness he commits. However the majority of Mr Hyde’s evils are not described, not through laziness on the part of the author but rather great literary and sociological intelligence.
Mr Hyde then becomes whatever the reader deems him to be, in Victorian London the chances are that Mr Hyde is a manifestation of the many social taboos existing then. However to the modern reader he becomes a reflection of personal vice. And as Mr Hyde is exercised by his deeds in the novel our own Hyde’s are similarly strengthened.
In the drug addict who seeks to lose themselves in wasteful high oblivion, Hyde is not only the ecstasy but also the effect afterwards. He is the creeping sense of losing oneself in those who become enthralled and addicted in a world of extreme highs and lows.
In the gambler Hyde is the winning jackpot, but then further down the road he is then the destruction of sane betting as the stakes become increasingly unrealistic and disadvantageous.
In the promiscuous Hyde is the lust but then he is silencing and losing of our conscience as the consequences emotionally or otherwise become increasingly irrelevant.
What does this tell us? Evidently we are not all doomed to be destroyed by our vice’s, but perhaps we should be careful on the ones we chose. We all run the risk of losing ourselves to the Mr Hyde who follows our heels weak and deformed if we let him out too often. It would quite frankly be a sorry affair if we were all the same, or all conservatively restrained, but perhaps the lesson is to be careful so that any activity that strengthens our Hyde’s we counterbalance with a Dr Jekyll saving good deed.
Essentially we should all try to rescue ourselves with actions of good conscience – although I cannot say what makes good a bad deed there is clearly a balance to be had in life for our own sake.
Every time I read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde I try even harder to balance out my moral timesheet in favour of the positive so as to avoid one day writing the same heart-breaking letter Dr Jekyll writes at the end of the novel, the final paragraph being a hopeless and bleak surrender to his evil self. Of course morality id on a spectrum and should be a largely personal thing, however I keep to the hope that deep down with enough exposure to the world we all begin to agree on what is essentially right and wrong, good and bad.
And that is why Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a master class in morality, because we can do what we like, but we may end up loathing ourselves for doing so. Once we start repeating actions we regretted the first time over and over it cannot be said to be a learning experience but a bad habit with which we must part, or else look back on in our old age and lament.
Well that was a bit serious wasn’t it?
)
