Strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde
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Strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde
The idea of dramatising the struggle between two sides of the same person is so played out it's a source of comedy. Louis C.K has a routine called "of course, but maybe" in which he explains the competition between his good and bad thoughts. In another routine he describes the horrible things he says when he's driving, then reflects, "Where outside of a car is that even nearly okay?" And "What am I capable of?"
The joke in Adaptation is that the fictional Donald is a way of dramatising the struggle between the side of the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman who wants to avoid cliché and another part of him who wants to please his audience even if that means writing a story that's been told ad infinitum. "You explore the notion that cop and criminal are really two aspects of the same person," Charlie tells Donald. "See every cop movie ever made for other examples of this." To express a response to that in Louis C.K. terms, of course it's cliché, but maybe it's the only story there is to tell. Maybe writers need to be more crafty about it now than Robert Louis Stevenson in Victorian England where people were so repressed that acknowledging the dark side of human nature was original.
Henry Jekyll's struggle with his dark side is more complicated than the "Jekyll good, Hyde bad" way it's often portrayed in movies. Jekyll admits that he has always been "radically both" good and bad. He sees himself as "in no sense a hypocrite" because he is as sincere in his impulses to relieve suffering as to do harm. As Mr Hyde Jekyll destroys a portrait of his father, an act symbolic of Jekyll's attempt to destroy his conscience. Jekyll speaks of "the comparative youth, the light step, leaping pulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde". The word "disguise", the name "Hyde", and the fact that Jekyll calls his story his "confession" - all suggest this is less a story of dual personalities than of a double life. Hyde is symbolic of the excuses we hide behind that allow us to obey our cruel impulses. Jekyll compares himself drinking the Mr Hyde potion to a drunkard who "reasons upon his vice" while in the same sentence he rationalises that both he and the alcoholic do not really know how bad the drink makes them. He also says that the "pleasures" he "made haste to seek" in his "disguise" were not that bad at first, but describes Hyde growing stronger with each misdeed, which reminds me of the way angry people expect to feel better by getting anger out of their system, but find the more they express the anger the further they have to take the next fit of rage to feel satisfied.
There is no Mr Hyde, no mean drunks and no road rage - there are only angry people who use a car or a bottle or the anonymity of the Internet to feel safe lashing out. And the more they do, the more they want to do.
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Such a gray area certainly gives the reader a few moments to relate with both personalities and perhaps has us wondering which we might choose were we to find ourselves in the good doctor's predicament.
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It is tormenting to read about a man who is unable to live with an ugly side of him. Most men subconsciously interprets a story based on the life they had lived, and so I have always seen this as a tale of a man struggling with mental illness, dissociative personality disorder, to be precise.
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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is a book about a London lawyer named John Gabriel Utterson who decides to investigate the going ons betweens his old friend Dr. Jekyll and the evil Edward Hyde.
A book I would recommend for teenagers and adults. My teenage foster daughter had to read this in high school for an assignment.
I decided to pick this book up for three reasons. One being that my foster daughter was reading it and I was curious as to what it was and two it kept being mentioned or quoted in a bible study I was reading and three I could apply it to my reading challenge: A book with antonyms in the title. Before getting the chance to read the book someone explained the context to me in bible study which pretty much gave away the book. So to me there wasn’t the scariness that most people experience when reading this book. No anticipation none of that unfortunately. Knowing what happens really brought the book down for me. Sorry to the author that my review is not going to have that many stars for that reason.
This was a hard book for me to get through. I am not sure if it was because I knew the outcome, the surprise, or if it was the writing style. It was something different from what I have read in the past. Not that it was written in an older language but just a completely different style then I am used to. To be honest there were many times in the story where nothing seemed to be happening and I found it just very dull. It may be because these days this story comes out in many tv shows and in many thrillers. My mind may have been expecting more of that suspense which there was none. I guess that can be a problem when reading a classic you have heard peoples opinions, seen movie and tv adaptions and the suspense has been stripped from you before you even start reading the book.
While reading other peoples reviews I found it very interesting on how they compared it to the hulk. I do not want to give away the story but man that really opened up my eyes. I love the hulk he’s funny (well the one in the avengers). Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde not so much.
I rate this book a 2 out of 4 stars.
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