Author: Victoria Isaac

Internal Conflict and Central Gothic Irony

Throughout the first half of this semester, we have read multiple stories with multiple gothic elements. Most of the elements displayed include but are not limited to the following: cruelty, lust, fear, violence, doing the forbidden, and acting violent beyond expectation. The Lottery and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both display these gothic elements. Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, Tessie, and Mr. Summers portray these gothic elements in their own ways. These elements are displayed mainly through external and internal conflicts.

“The Lottery” follows the story of Tessie Hutchinson and Mr. Summers who hold the lottery as a tradition annually: one person is against the lottery, and one is for the lottery. “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” follows a mystery of who tramples a little girl in the beginning of the story, and when people argue that either Jekyll or Hyde were the ones who did it, they find out they are the same person. In comparing Jekyll and Hyde to Mr. Summers and Tessie, I will be exploring the different conflicts between the two pairs: external conflict and internal conflict. Could lust, fear and violence be the cause of the conflicts? Or could they be the catalyst for something worse? Within this comparison, I will be exploring the ideas of control, science, and the central gothic irony. The central gothic irony plays a huge part in both stories between all four characters. To answer these questions about conflict, I will first have to examine the conflict between Tessie and Mr. Summers and then examine the conflict between Jekyll and Hyde. Based on what I already know, Tessie and Mr. Summers have an external conflict since they are fighting with each other in terms of tradition and whether or not to keep the tradition of the lottery alive. Jekyll and Hyde have more of an internal conflict because they are ultimately the same person and they just switch back and forth between personalities depending on who they are around.

 Also with this comparison, I will be exploring the gothic elements of fear, violence, and control since both stories have these elements in common. I will explore who’s being feared and who’s controlling the violent acts in each story. I will also explore which character is being controlled if any. The biggest concept I want to explore is the idea of how central gothic irony plays in each story. After the results and the fates of all four characters, do these stories return to a sense of normalcy? Or is the sense of normalcy something that no longer exists?

These two stories portray the same gothic elements of fear, violence, and control in different ways. In “The Lottery”, the elements of fear and violence are displayed by the connection between Mr. Summers and Tessie. Mr. Summers is in charge of the lottery and chooses who lives and who dies. Tessie however, despises the idea of the lottery and believes that it “isn’t fair” and “it isn’t right” to hold this tradition every year (The Lottery, page 6). Tessie believes that the lottery being held every year is something that should be stopped. 

This concept in general is transgressive since it goes beyond the boundaries of conventional law. Normally we use a judicial system to determine who lives and who dies, and most times instead of a death sentence the usual punishment is jail time or community service. This story also displays control due to the fact that Mr. Summers determines who dies. He claims that he wants to “finish this quickly” (The Lottery, page 6) when they figure out who gets the black spot. Tessie repeatedly said it wasn’t right which made her afraid of tradition. The central gothic irony isn’t really determined in this story and if it is, then it is not clear. As readers, we can determine that there is a return to normalcy after Tessie gets stoned because the lottery follows tradition every year and nothing really changes each time the lottery is performed.

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” also displays a sense of control throughout the story, especially when it comes to Jekyll and Hyde themselves. Science comes into play with this because in watching the film adaptation, Jekyll made a potion that would allow him to transition back and forth between himself and Hyde. In a way Jekyll controls the changes with the potion, but doesn’t control who he hurts. Unlike Mr. Summers and Tessie, who argue that this process isn’t fair, Jekyll and Hyde argue more with themselves. In the movie adaptation, when Lanyon tries to get Jekyll to convince everyone that he was the one who committed the act, Jekyll immediately states “I’m Dr. Jekyll. I’ve done nothing. You’re looking for a man named Hyde. I’m Dr. Henry Jekyll.” That indicates that Hyde has some power but not over Jekyll, just over his own actions. 

The central gothic irony is a big thing that both of the stories display but at the same time in some instances it feels like the central gothic irony is missing from both stories. “The Lottery” ends when Mr. Summers sees Tessie with the black spot on the paper and he asks to “finish this quickly”, this meaning having Tessie stoned. It ends with her saying that it wasn’t fair and she gets stoned. The story doesn’t specifically say if the lottery still continues for the next few years after or if it eventually got cancelled so the theme of the central gothic irony is still quite unclear. 

At the end of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Mr. Utterson reads the will that all of Dr. Jekyll’s belongings would go to Hyde, but they are the same person so if Jekyll is dead then Hyde is dead too. Instead, he left everything to Mr. Utterson and not Hyde. Even before that Jekyll states that “I have done nothing.” which shows that Hyde has a little more control than Jekyll does. It’s different from Mr. Summers because although neither of them physically committed a crime of any sort, or at least they claim they didn’t, Mr. Summers stayed alive at the end. Since Tessie was the only one who went against Mr. Summers and the lottery process in general, she was the only one who suffered the consequences. In the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, they both suffered consequences. Jekyll drank a poison to kill Hyde, but ultimately killed himself in the end.

Ultimately, both of these stories display the themes of central gothic irony but it is also missing at the same time. They both display fear and violence with the trampling and the process of the lottery itself. Something that I learned from both stories is that consequences are unavoidable and the way you handle them determines how you move forward.