Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (from now on DJMH for short) was quite a relief to read. After somehow managing to power through Rousseau and Nietzsche, a classic tale like DJMH was relaxing and definitely did me some good. Yet obviously, like all good things, there was something that bothered me about DJMH. It’s the incredibly nosy Mr. Utterson. Now it’s not to be rude to Mr. Utterson, but Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s personal life is not his business! Perhaps another thing that bothered me about this book is the large amount of secrecy throughout it.
While I understand that the secrecy and mystery is what makes this book so enjoyable to read, but what I would give for another version written by Robert Louis Stevenson completely in the perspective of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. We would get to see the inside of a character who is definitely having some identity crisis problems, and we would get to see details into the way Jekyll/Hyde live and interact with their own thoughts and actions. Like Caroline mentioned in the lecture, who really wrote the check? It seems like that scene, in the perspective of Jekyll/Hyde would be amazing, as we’d get to see the tension behind the situation, and we’d get to see who made the call of writing the check (whether there was any [internal] disagreement), and who ultimately truly wrote the check out.
Other than these two very insignificant complaints, DJMH was very enjoyable. I really liked how Dr. Jekyll seemed like a bit of an unlikely tragic hero. His hamartia (tragic flaw) is his want to transform himself and free his good and evil sides, yet the dark side ends up taking over. This is a story where the hero is defeated, by himself… Maybe it’s supposed to say something about us as people, that somethimes we’re not always able to be the best person. Sometimes our darker side manages to take over, and in Jekyll’s/Hyde’s case it leads to the protagonist (and maybe even the antagonist’s) death.
