Midterm Essay

Yarlin Peralta

ENG 3407

October 26, 2020

Midterm Essay

      Dr.Jekyll/Mr.Hyde & The Invisible Man

 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 routinely Sunday walks between Mr. Enfield and the lawyer, they pass a mysterious door when Mr. Enfield tells 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 an 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 affect 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 difference between the scenes is that Mr. Hyde had to pay  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.    

Moreover, in the story “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, every time Hyde does something bad he turns  into Jekyll and hides from the world and his consequences. For example, Mr. Hyde murdered a man and Dr. Jekyll suppressed the side of him that was Hyde in order to hide his guilt/consequences for his actions, the police couldn’t find him because in a way he doesn’t exist.  According to the text, “Yes, she said, this was Mr. Hyde’s, but he was not at home; he had been in that night very late, but had gone away again in less than an hour; there was nothing strange in that; his habits were very irregular, and he was often absent; for instance, it was nearly two months since she had seen him till yesterday…for Mr. Hyde had numbered few familiars — even the master of the servant-maid had only seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been photographed;”. This is important because it shows how Mr. Hyde disappear and people will notice, but they won’t really pay attention to it because he was very inconsistent, as we all know he had to be two different selves at once which was a bit hard to do when your other half was a man like Dr. Jekyll, very well known. Mr. Hyde didn’t have anybody but Jekyll therefore, it was going to be very hard for Mr. Utterson and the police to find him because he was hidden behind Dr. Jekyll, his other half.   

A similar scene happens in the story “Invisible man”,  after the incident with the tall blonde man with blue eyes, invisible man  finds a place in a basement to hide where he  never pays for power and rent the building is also for whites only. As stated in the text, “Now, aware of my invisibility, I live rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century, which I discovered when I was trying to escape in the night from Ras the Destroyer… That is why I fight my battle with Monopolated Light & Power. The deeper reason, I mean: It allows me to feel my vital aliveness. I also fight them for taking so much of my money before I learned to protect myself. In my hole in the basement there are exactly 1,369 lights. I’ve wired the entire ceiling, every inch of it. And not with fluorescent bulbs, but with the older, more-expensive-to-operate kind, the filament type. An act of sabotage, you know.”  This is relevant because invisible man finds this place after he figured out he was invisible, he “hides” there but uses a massive amount of light like he wants them (white people?) to notice he is there even though he claims he likes being invisible is the best thing that ever happened to him because he can take advantage.

The difference between Mr. Hyde and invisible man’s situation  is that Mr. Hyde can’t be invisible even if he tried to because he’s both Jekyll and Hyde into one. Mr. Hyde does not have a choice of where he has to hide because at the end of the day he is also Jekyll and if Jekyll were to disappear many people will end up looking for him which was not a good idea since Jekyll was a well known man. The Invisible man was invisible, nobody notices him therefore it is easier for him to hide which explains why he hides in the basement and nobody feels the need to check because at the end of the day they don’t know who he is, he’s invisible after all. Invisible can do anything and nobody will notice but if Mr. Hyde does something Dr. Jekyll will know what he did because they share the same mind.    

Stevenson and Ellison, both show elements in a Gothic literature such as the spirit of perverseness throughout each of the story. According to Edgar Allan Poe, the spirit of perverseness means “…perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a stupid action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow.” Poe’s description of the spirit of perverseness connects to both, Mr. Hyde and invisible man because throughout the story there’s a point where they both know they shouldn’t make an action, but they do it anyways. Mr. Hyde does bad things without worrying about the consequences because he knows he can just turn into Dr. Jekyll and everything will turn out just okay; he runs away and hide from his bad choices. On the other hand, the invisible man does it for similar reasons, he does it because he figured out he was invisible and now he can do everything he pleases without getting notice including, living rent free and using a huge amount of light power without getting billed.    

 Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde and Invisible man were  both influenced by the spirit of perverseness throughout the stories despite their similarities and differences. Dr. Jekyll’s was Mr. Hyde conscience and that’s the only reason he didn’t do more damage in society. However, at the end of the story Dr. Jekyll didn’t have much control over Mr. Hyde and that’s when things started to get more drastic, Hyde’s actions became more evil as time passed by. Jekyll used to go to bed as Dr. Jekyll and used to wake up as Mr. Hyde because the drugs from the experiment  were making Dr. Jekyll weaker/deadly and Mr. Hyde stronger. Even though the invisible man didn’t have a conscience in another self he was also perverse. The Invisible man was perverse in his own unique way because he was taking his invisibility as an advantage, as an advantage to do things without getting notice. And in a way he kind of had two sides, two different ways to think, he used to think as invisible man and as his intellectual self or like he says “I am in the great American tradition of thinkers”.