Yarlin’s Coffehouse Post 4

Yarlin Peralta

ENG 3407

October 19, 2020

Midterm Essay Draft

      Dr.Jekyll/Mr.Hyde & The Invisible Man

What does being Gothic means to you? Gothic can mean many things to different people, since there’s many ways to describe that something is Gothic. However, for my understanding, after reading many pieces of Gothic literature, Gothic means something dark and mysterious, somewhat spooky and most of the time very unexpected.  In this piece of writing there will be a comparison between two characters of different stories that are considered Gothic. The two characters that will be compared  and contrasted are Dr. Jelly/Mr.Hyde as one character from the story “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson and invisible man in the story “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison. Lastly, this piece of writing will show how both of the characters are influenced by the spirit of perverseness. 

In the story “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, during one of the Sunday walks between Mr. Enfield and the lawyer, they pass a mysterious door when Mr. Enfield starts to tell a story associated with the door. The story is about a man who walk over a girl who he left screaming on the ground but Mr. Enfield went after him and brought him back to where he left the girl to take responsibility for his actions. According to the text, “All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. This is important because it shows that Mr.Hyde stumbled upon a little girl who he also walked over and then had the audacity to walk away like nothing had happened leaving her lying on the floor. This scene of the story shows Hyde’s temperament/personality and character as a person. He was a angry little man with a short temperament who clearly didn’t care if he hurt others, at the end of the day his actions didn’t really affected him, it affected Jekyll who was his other form. 

 In addition, a scene very similar to this one happens in the story “Invisible Man ” when the man was walking during the night and stumble upon a tall, blonde man with blue eyes, who said something inappropriate and disrespectful to a man, maybe to a man of color, and that man decided to beat him up because he was highly offensive to him. As stated in the text, “I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps because of the near darkness he saw me and called me an insulting name. I sprang at him, seized his coat lapels and demanded that he apologize. He was a tall blond man, and as my face came close to his he looked insolently out of his blue eyes and cursed me, his breath hot in my face as he struggled. I pulled his chin down sharp upon the crown of my head, butting him as I had seen the West Indians do, and I felt his flesh tear and the blood gush out, and I yelled, “Apologize! Apologize!” But he continued to curse and struggle, and I butted him again and again until he went down heavily, on his knees, profusely bleeding. I kicked him repeatedly, in a frenzy because he still uttered insults though his lips were frothy with blood. Oh yes, I kicked him! And in my outrage I got out my knife and prepared to slit his throat, right there beneath the lamplight in the deserted street, holding him by the collar with one hand, and opening the knife with my teeth — when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually; that he, as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare! And I stopped the blade, slicing the air as I pushed him away, letting him fall back to the street”. This scene is relevant because it shows that the invisible man only stops from murdering a man because he figured out that he was invisible, he knew the man was not going to be able to describe him to the authorities and or recognize him, and the reason might be because of his skin color. The invisible man started to attack a man because he didn’t like what the man told him and nearly almost killed him for not apologizing. He was a very angry man but somehow bittersweet about the fact that he was invisible, but for the most part he was kind of okay to be invisible because he was able to benefit from it. 

The differences between the scenes is that Mr. Hyde had to paid  the family of the little girl for the incident, and because it was the right thing to do out of respect of his actions. However, the girl was not badly hurt, but she was very scared. Mr. Hyde was seen by Mr. Enfield while doing such thing and then he  had to face the family and literally pay for his actions. In the other hand, the invisible man gets very angry at a man for offending him, he tries to slip the man’s throat but then decide not to because he figured out he was invisible therefore, he was not going to pay for such crime. They both walk away without  murdering anyone, for this scene at least, even though the tall blonde guy with blue eyes was badly hurt.