Many moments in the chapter "Story of a Door," made me as a reader curious, and affected the story in an indirect manner. For example, when Mr. Enfield tells a story of a horrific man who tramples a little girl. The quote to support this is "...the man trampled calmly over the child's body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds like nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn't like a man; it was like some damned juggernaut." The man explained in this quote is later referred to as Mr. Hyde. Hyde could have been a symbol used by Stevenson to represent evil in the 19th century.
During this event, the murderer, Mr. Enfield and even the parents of the child didn't wish to take actions. The incident was settled with money, and never mentioned again. The Evil and Good passage on the Fleming blog discusses how society influences what is good and evil. It seems that in the story, unintentional murder is not considered serious. The loss of an individual who is extremely close to another person, doesn't seem to harshly affect them.
In our current society, if a similar situation was to occur, the perpetrator would immediately react and would feel sorry for the individual who he or she has murdered. The reason behind that is that we maintain a society where evil is prohibited, and we try our best to avoid it. In Jekyll and Hyde, evil seems to be widely accepted, and this situation supports it. I believe that an important theme that could be conveyed through this instance is; people can make an enormous factor in what is considered right and wrong in a society. If everyone commits a wrong doing and accepts it, then their community will turn out to be as such and then evil will always be present.
I agree that it is very strange for a man to just trample a little girl in that way. I also can't believe all this was happening at 3:00 AM.
ReplyDeleteVery true, I also believe that Mr.Hyde represents evil within society at that time period. This is more evident throughout the book by the Carew murder case where he killed a men for seemingly no reason. Although I believe the girl wasn't killed in the first chapter, if she was Utterson would have been disappointed in Jekyll for even talking to Hyde, which he does when Hyde murders Carew. You have very intriguing thoughts on society including "If everyone commits a wrong doing and acceps it, then their community will turn out to be as such and then evil will always be present." I think though if everyone does a wrong and everyone accepts it that it is not evil since no one perceives it as such.
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