strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde illustrated

Hyde is very much a Victorian product showing man’s quest for keeping his animal nature suppressed and only showing the world the world a stiff, tightly controlled facade. Although this seems a rather mild story by today’s standards, it’s simplicity reveals a timeless classic of murder and monsters on the streets of Victorian London.The Strange Case of Dr. The other theme that comes immediately to mind is the familiar one of science going too far. Jekyll’s struggles to keep his “bad side”, Mr. Two of it’s main themes are the classic “good versus evil” story line as we read of Dr.

This story has captured the attention of many generations and has a lasting quality that has kept it and, it’s many versions, in the forefront of the literary world.The author tells his chilling story with the use of both descriptive and powerful language. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is a novella that was first published in 1886. Nevertheless, this leaves me thinking this is a much darker, personal book than perhaps is generally believed.

This was possibly for well intentioned medicinal reasons as he was not a well man. “Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame.”Ī quick google reveals that he wrote Jekyll and Hyde during a six day cocaine binge and spent much of his later, short life, hooked on opium, alcohol and morphine. “It took on this occasion a double dose to recall me to myself and alas! six hours after, as I sat looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be re-administered.”

“and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.” The negative effects of drugs and the associated shame and secrecy. Never having read the book before, the thing I was most struck with was its apparent concern with drug addiction. You know before reading it that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person, it has entered our language. Other reviews have dwelt on themes of duality etc and others still correctly state that the impact of this book is lessened by how much of its plot is already in the collective consciousness of readers.

Strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde illustrated