J+H - Nature Of Evil (Essay Prediction)

Question 1

Thesis -

Answer 1

Stevenson writes the novella to explore his readers’ interests in crime, violence and sin.

A Christian perspective for a Christian reader, it also subverts that perspective for those like Stevenson who had rejected Christianity.

Ending will make us ask if this is a Christian novel (where the evil of J+H is punished) or does that evil continue because it’s inside all of us?

Question 2

“Damned juggernaut”

Answer 2

• Damned is sophisticated imagery of hell
• Juggernaut comes from Hindu (Jagganath is part of their religious festival) - shows how the British are demonising other religions
  = othering

Question 3

• “trampled calmly over the child’s body”

Answer 3

• oxymoron of “trampled calmly”
• “trampled” is Enfield’s exaggeration because he only stepped on the child once who ran in to him and then continued
• Stevenson is suggesting that Hyde isn’t evil, he doesn’t really care about the child but doesn’t do much to hurt her.

Question 4

“I saw sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him”

Answer 4

• “sick” - Stevenson is suggesting that this reaction from the doctor is a sickness
• Christian interpretation of everyone wanting to kill Hyde - proves how inherently evil he is.
• Non-Christian interpretation - who is evil here? It’s not Hyde that wants to kill anyone… What about Enfield and the Doctor, supposedly civilised men?

Question 5

“Satan” juxtaposed “we screwed him up to £100”)

Answer 5

• Enfield and the doctor blackmail Hyde
• They are the ones committing a crime, not Hyde
• They are “evil” - they act on evil intentions they can get away with because of their status.
• Stevenson is suggesting Society is more evil than Hyde.

Question 6

“Capers of his youth”

Answer 6

• Euphemism (capers instead of blackmail)
• Shows society covers up sin
• Language Utterson uses shows blackmail isn’t a big deal in secret

Question 7

“From some place at the end of the world”

Answer 7

• Another euphemism - what has Enfield been up to? Sinful behaviour like Hyde?
• Stevenson points out Hyde and Enfield are no different, but Enfield is actually more evil
• End of the world > Armageddon > references the idea we’re all born with sin (original sin) and we all give into it. It’s only civilised behaviour that stops us giving into it fully > but Enfield gives in to them
• Hypocrisy

Question 8

Front and back - “handsome” - “sordid” where Hyde enters

Answer 8

• “commingled from good and evil”
• this is our natural state
• Christian interpretation - why are the rich men being hypocrites etc going out in Soho
• Stevenson’s - if we’re born with these instincts, are we good and evil, or is this just being human? It’s only Christian society that decides that’s a sin.
• John Hunter house - a famous surgeon who lead to massive medical advances, dissected bodies and saved people’s lives (successful operations) FIGURE OF GOOD?
• BUT in order to dissect the bodies, Hunter paid people to rob graves and bring the bodies back illegally. COMMINGLED

Question 9

“Commingled out of good and evil”

Answer 9

• Anti-Christian message as the Christian belief is that we’re born evil and we must suppress it.
• “commingled” suggests you can’t separate the good from the evil - they’re intertwined - it’s just who we are.

Question 10

“Murder” of Danvers Carew

Answer 10

• Gives Christian readers the sense that Hyde is pure evil
• Danvers Carew is an MP - murdered near the Houses of Parliament
• No part of society is safe. Everyone can be a victim of crime. Readers are obsessed with crime.

Question 11

“She used to say, with streaming tears when she narrated…”

Answer 11

• After the event, she wasn’t traumatised, she was so excited, that she couldn’t stop talking about it
• If it was so awful to her she wouldn’t be continually telling the tale
• Evil is part of all of us. We’re all attracted to sin. Does that make it something that is awful in society? Should we accept ourselves for who we are?

Question 12

“Ape-like fury”

Answer 12

• Violence (what readers want)
• Darwin’s theory
• Victorians afraid of this theory as it went against Christianity
• Scientific developments showed the Earth was older than what Christians thought
• Survival of the fittest - this evil Hyde could be what we all evolve into if the evil Hyde succeeds as evolution rewards the dominant gene

Question 13

“My devil came out roaring” “bravo”

Answer 13

• doesn’t say why it happens.
• Hyde is his “bravo” - someone who acts on your behalf. Hyde does what Jekyll wants to do as Jekyll experiences everything that Hyde does.
• Suggests there is a motive - Jekyll has a reason but keeps it secret from the reader - Utterson.
• Makes him an unreliable narrator.
• Christian - original sin - Hyde is real evil - gives the readers what they want
• Perhaps a hidden motive - homosexuality?

Question 14

• “scientific heresies”

Answer 14

• “heresies” is a Christian word for false beliefs that go against God
• Jekyll in the form of Hyde asks Lanyon “will you be wise” - and not see the transformation?
• Lanyon is tempted, sees it, and goes mad and dies as the scientific heresies have come true.

Question 15

• Jekyll and Hyde both die at the end - they are punished? - Christian ending.
• Silence of “Gabriel” Utterson

Answer 15

• had Lanyon’s letter (transformation)
• had Jekyll’s explanation (confession - sins)
• Puts letters in safe, as Jekyll’s will says that Utterson keeps everything.
• So Utterson hides the info has he wants to inherit from the will
• “Gabriel” - most famous angel - symbol of Christianity juxtaposes how Utterson behaves is ironic / deliberate because Stevenson is undermining the Christian message of the novel.
• He is saying we’re corrupt like Utterson OR he’s saying Utterson is typical of Middle class men (Enfield, Doctor)

Question 16

Conclusion -

Answer 16

• book has criticised civilised morality as false = Christian or false = goes against human nature.
• Civilised morality is a Hypocritical veneer (facade)
• And damaging - Hyde is only created because society won’t let Jekyll do what he needs to do to have innocent, human pleasures (not against law)
• OR Christian message is that Hyde is damaging because Jekyll hasn’t had proper moral control - Jekyll proves we need to be watchful against our sinful desires

Question 17

Utterson -

Answer 17

Handwriting expert - letter from Hyde

• Jekyll and Hyde’s handwriting are the same > same person?
• Utterson doesn’t reveal to police
• Swears Guest and Poole (Jekyll’s butler) to secrecy - Poole can’t tell anyone about the will, Lanyon’s letter and Jekyll’s confession
• Utterson is corrupt, represents corruption of middle class men / all of society

Question 18

Essay -

Answer 18

• THESIS: Stevenson writes this murder mystery to satisfy his readers’ interest in crime and violence, to explore man’s attraction to sin, and to make us think about the true nature of evil in society.
• We are first introduced to Hyde as a “damned Juggernaut”, stepping on a young girl he has knocked over, “trampled calmly over the child’s body”.
• Enfield describes this and the doctor who arrives as so enraged that he wants to kill Hyde: “I saw that sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him”, a feeling Enfield shares.
• Many Christian readers would take this as proof that Hyde is so evil that people have a visceral reaction and want to remove it from the world.
• However, Stevenson was an atheist, and we can see that he leaves room for a completely different perspective of evil. Hyde is “damned” because he is different, other.
• This is reflected in the word “Juggernaut”, derived from Hindu worship. What Hindu considers holy, Christianity associates with evil.
• Stevenson also contrasts the actions of Hyde to Enfield and the doctor. Hyde is run into, and ignores the girl who ran into him, stepping “over”, not on her.
• This pales in comparison to the evil thoughts of the men who “desire to kill him”.
• Then they decide to blackmail Hyde, who reminds them of “Satan”: “we screwed him up to a hundred pounds” because he was “naturally helpless”. Not only does this portray the evil of middle class gentlemen, it also portrays Hyde as partly innocent.
• After all, an evil man would care nothing for his reputation, and therefore refuse to pay anything.
• Stevenson presents us with a range of puzzling examples of Hyde’s evil before revealing, in the final chapter, further mysteries about his nature. Taking the novel chronologically, we find out that Utterson suspects Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll for some “capers of his youth”.
• His choice of the cheerful “capers” implies that among gentlemen sins are ignored. We imagine these must be sexual adventures.
• The central mystery in the novel is what Hyde’s sins must be. We never find out.
• Similarly, we never find out what Enfield was doing when he first encountered Hyde, having come back “from some place at the end of the world”. This is another euphemism for sin which is so unacceptable to society that it is only on the edge of civilisation.
• This implies that Hyde’s brand of evil behaviour is the same as that of other men in civilised society.
• A further clue that this is so is the setting. Hyde lives in Soho, which symbolises all kinds of sin. This is less than a five minute walk from the respectable Leicester Square where Jekyll lives.
• This implies respectable gentlemen all have sinful desires which are so alluring they live close by Soho which makes them possible.
• This is even more pronounced when we discover Hyde lives at the back of Stevenson’s house. The front is symbolically respectable, amongst “handsome houses” like the “handsome” Jekyll. The back of the house is “sinister” and “sordid”.
• Stevenson is pointing out not just the “duality” of Jekyll, but also the “duality of man”: we “are commingled out of good and evil”.
• This perspective suggests that dividing people into good and evil is a false way of looking at human nature.
• This calls into question the Christian perspective of the novel, where evil is punished and the two main sinners, Hyde and Jekyll, are killed.
• Chapter four portrays a violent murder of an MP, Sir Danvers Carew. This takes place near the Houses of Parliament, which invites the reader to imagine that no part of London is safe from evil men, just as no respectable person is safe.
• The attack feels random and motiveless. However, it is witnessed by an apparently innocent maid who then takes great pleasure in dramatically recounting the story as a theatrical performance “she used to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated that experience”.
• This adds to the idea that everyone in London is attracted to evil.
• Hyde’s motive to murder can only be guessed at, but the description that he clubbed Carew with “ape-like fury” plays on contemporary fear of Darwin’s theory of Evolution.
• This undermines the Biblical origin story of Genesis, and therefore challenges Christian belief.
• A further problem is that Darwin’s theory predicts survival of the fittest. So evolution does not mean we become increasingly civilised and moral. Instead, a greater capacity for evil and violence will be passed on if these qualities are more successful.
• Jekyll’s confession in the final chapter shows that his evil has “come out roaring” as he had been kept from transforming into Hyde for some months. This implies evil is more powerful than the capacity for goodness.
• However, he also tells us that Hyde is his “bravo”, enjoying the sinful “pleasures” Jekyll can experience through him.
• Knowing this, we have to ask if he acts as Jekyll’s “bravo” when he kills Carew.
• Although Stevenson refuses to tell us, the novel is filled with unspoken homosexuality. It explains the cause of suspected blackmail.