illustration of a face with two separate halves, one good and one evil, located above the fumes of a potion

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Conflict in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Summary:

The primary conflict in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the internal struggle within Dr. Jekyll between his respectable self and his darker impulses, personified by Mr. Hyde. Jekyll's experiments to separate these aspects lead to Hyde's increasing dominance, culminating in Jekyll's suicide to prevent Hyde's complete takeover. The external conflicts include Jekyll's interactions with characters like Utterson and Lanyon, revealing societal pressures and the consequences of Jekyll's dual life.

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What is the conflict in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

The conflict in Robert Louis Stevenson's Gothic novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the struggle between Dr. Henry Jekyll and the dual nature of his personality. As a Victorian, Dr. Jekyll enjoys the reputation and recognition of the best social sets. He is known as a man of prudence and intelligence, which is what earns the respect that he gets from his upper-class peers.

Yet, it is quite obvious that there is a dark side that Henry Jekyll wishes to experience, and he does not openly attempt to do it because of his fear of breaking the iron-clad rules of decorum that dominate the overall psyche of the Victorian society where he lives.

To be able to indulge in the pleasures of sin and innate secret desires, Jekyll abides by his Promethean nature of desiring to change the natural order of things and creates a way to transform himself into another man: Mr. Edward Hyde; one who does as he pleases and responds only to his own wants and operates under his basic Id.

Hence, the conflict: In wanting so badly to protect the outer image of Dr. Jekyll, and also in wanting so badly to indulge in the sins of Mr. Hyde, Henry Jekyll does not take into consideration that both personalities would still need to be under control. Mr. Edward Hyde is never controlled, and is left to act as badly as he wants. It is this freedom that grants Hyde the power and the strengths that make him so much stronger than Dr. Jekyll. Conclusively, Hyde's inherent and sinful nature (perhaps ALL of our natures, as well?) is much more powerful than the monitored and well-manicured persona of Dr. Jekyll that the world sees.

The resolution begins when Hyde starts taking over and dominating the persona of the man. Hence, whenever Jekyll is able to go back to being himself, he immediately locks himself in his lab. The experiment of the dual personality has gone completely awry and, from what the reader learns, the man kills himself...under the personality of Hyde. We learn about the resolution through Lanyon's letters which also represent one of the most climactic moments of the novel.

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What are Dr. Jekyll's internal and external conflicts in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

In Robert Louis Steveson's story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I believe that Dr. Jekyll is greatly conflicted about what he has done.

In terms of the internal conflict, Dr. Jekyll lives each day knowing that when he is Mr. Hyde, he is doing terrible things. Attack and then murder are things that come from Mr. Hyde, but Jekyll is partly responsible if not in the choice to carry out these actions, then from providing the opportunity that Mr. Hyde can. His sense of guilt would be man vs. self.

An external conflict is that which exists between the authorities trying to make sense of Hyde's actions and track him down, and Jekyll's need to cover it up. This is man vs. society.

As the changes continue, Dr. Jekyll becomes weaker, overcome by illness. This is an external conflict, man vs. nature. The ability of the doctor to become someone else suggests yet another external conflict: man vs. the supernatural—because this is not a normal occurrence, and "supernatural" describes anything that is beyond what is natural.

The last conflict is internal: Jekyll has to decide what he must do to stop Hyde, and ultimately, he knows he must change for one last time into Mr. Hyde and then end his life. This is man vs. self.

There are many examples of conflict within the story. Although the circumstances are unusual, the conflicts existing between Dr. Jekyll and his alter-ego are very real and significant.

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What is the major conflict in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

In Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the major conflict is the duality of man.

All human beings wear masks. There are emotions and capabilities within each and everyone of us. As social beings, we follow societal expectations by suppressing all that is instinctive and considered too innate. In front of others, we socially learn what is admitted or not accepted as propriety and we act accordingly.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde deals with the duality of our nature. Our main character suppresses certain behaviors only to set them lose with Mr. Hyde for the sake of experiencing in grandiosity all the sensations that he denies himself when he acts according to the gentleman's rules. Would it not be easier to live in a society that does not pass judgement upon the actions of others, or upon the uniqueness of some individuals? That may sound like a question with an easy answer, but Stevenson's times were times of extreme social scrutiny, hypocrisy, and elitist snobbery.

Hence, the ultimate message that Stevenson sends through The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that all people, rich or poor, have the same capability of lowering themselves to the depth of depravity for the sake of feeling liberated.

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What is an external conflict in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

External conflict means the struggle between a character and some outside force, which could be another character or even something like nature.  Internal conflict is a struggle that the character has with him or herself like a decision to make.  So some things you could write about for your paragraph would be Jekyll's physical struggle with becoming Hyde, Utterson trying to find out who Hyde is, Lanyon witnessing Hyde's transformation into Jekyll and his subsequent illness, Jekyll's conflict with not being able to recreate the right mixture to create the chemical that transforms him, etc.  There are lots of examples of both external and internal throughout the novella.

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What are the conflicts in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Hi there- Stevenson uses the concept of Conflict in a number of ways.

So, there is the obvious conflict between Hyde and Jekyll, the contrast in personality and behaviour. Stevenson uses this inter-character conflict to then further raise and explore the duality of Man's nature. This therefore means that we all possess this dual personality trait as humans, that we are always in conflict with ourselves as we (usually!) behave thanks to the confines of Society. However, Stevenson suggests that actually, deep inside yourself, you also have such base desires as Hyde. It's just that thanks to the evolution of mankind over the odd millennium or two, we are better behaved and so have replaced our primordial and animalistic traits with a more civilised set of mores. To emphasise this, Stevenson has Hyde as "hirsute"; such a physical description highlights Hyde's more animalistic features/personalities and also eludes to Mankind's own and rather savage beginnings. Lots of suitable quotations, here are one or two:

"Something troglodytic..."

From The Chapter, Remarkable Incident of Dr Lanyon'-" tales came out of the man's cruelty, at once so callous and violent, of his vile life, of his strange associates..."

From Dr Lanyon's Narrative:

" but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred."

There are lots within the chapter, 'Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case.'

Also, Stevenson suggests both the decline in Jekyll and the the idea of conflict in his description of the setting within the narrative.

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Where does the battle between good and evil occur in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

In Chapter 8, entitled "The Last Night," Poole, Jekyll's butler, calls Utterson to Jekyll's house because he is so concerned about his employer.  Poole fears that someone has murdered Jekyll, and that it happened some eight days ago, he says, "'when [the household] heard him cry out upon the name of God; and who's in there instead of him, and why it stays there, is a thing that cries to Heaven [...].'"  Poole imagines that whoever hurt his employer is still in the room, though he cannot imagine why such a person would stay.  He says that for the last week, this person or "'whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying night and day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to his mind.'"  Further, he's been sent all over town to try to find a particular drug, and nothing he's brought back has been what is needed. 

We find out that Jekyll/Hyde is desperately attempting to recreate his mixture during this time, that Jekyll has really lost control over his experiment and over his evil nature, though his goodness has struggled with it for quite a while.  Now, however, the struggle has come to a head, as the final battle between good and evil takes place in his rooms: Jekyll, the good, ultimately cannot suppress Hyde, the evil, and now Hyde has nowhere to hide, and the man "'Weep[s] like a woman or a lost soul.'"  Utterson breaks down the door, despite Hyde's pleas, but by the time they enter the room, Hyde has taken his own life.  They find, by the fireside, another piece of evidence of the struggle and of evil winning over good: "a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated in his own hand, with startling blasphemies."  Evidently, Hyde had chosen one of Jekyll's favorite virtuous texts and had passed the time writing obscene notes in the margins. 

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What are the social, moral, and physical conflicts in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

The social conflict in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the double-dealing struggle between good and evil. Stevenson's society was greatly concerned with the duality in humankind's inner nature. It was a duality that led to good, like Jekyll's "futherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering," and to Hyde's evil that was "inherently malign and villainous." Jekyll himself sums it up when he writes that the "polar twins" of good and evil were "continuously struggling."

The moral conflict is the battle Jekyll wages within himself about the rightness and wisdom of yielding to Hyde. This is particularly pronounced in the end of the story but exists at the beginning as well since Jekyll is absolutely positive to keep his experiments and dark life a deep secret. In addition his experiments themselves presented a subtext of moral conflict because of the danger inherent within them, carried out as they were upon his own person:

I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity, ... [might] utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change.

The physical conflict is the great physical change that overcomes Jekyll coupled with the physical atrocities that Hyde does not hesitate to commit. Our first introduction to Hyde is through the story Enfield tells Utterson about his ghastly midnight encounter with Hyde, the gruesome stranger

I had ... a loathing to [the] gentleman[Hyde] at first sight. ... But the doctor's case was what struck me. ... every time he looked at my prisoner[Hyde], I saw that Sawbones turn sick and white ....

who has keys to and entrance at Jekyll's shabby, neglected laboratory door: "he carried us but to that place with the door? -- whipped out a key, went in, ...." The quote above underscores a third physical conflict, that of the overwhelming revulsion and violent hostility people feel in the presence of Hyde.

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