The archetypal theme that each person lives with good and evil and spends their lives struggling with the two forces is evident in numerous accounts in the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—by Robert Louis Stevenson—and shows the consequences of trying to change the natural duality. The novella is littered with examples of the duality of nature and exploits them in order to ensure that the point can be received; shown through decisive examples that lead to abnormality and intact examples that retain normalcy. The daily struggle with the forces of good and evil is normal in the day-to-day lives of people; trying to remove that struggle can only end in chaos and destruction.
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When Jekyll separated his character into himself—within which the struggle remained—and Hyde, who was the embodiment of all the evil found within him, he unwittingly started the destruction of what he knew as himself. His self-destruction while not entirely visible was in the majority mental as he gave his mind and new body over to the evil whims he wished to carry out. “…I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde” (112). (As Jekyll continued his destructive path of switching between the singularity and duality of his new life he started to lose the battle and spiral into a new life of chaos. The oncoming storm of chaos is made evident by the fact that it no longer mattered whether or not he had the whim to switch; he had started to be overcome by Mr. Hyde. As Dr. Jekyll began to switch between himself and the devilish Hyde without consent he—unbeknownst to him—started to give Hyde control over his mind and it influenced his actions. Jekyll did not wish to murder and connive schemes of great destruction and chaos but his morality had lost the battle in Jekyll’s attempt to ease the struggle. “Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man. The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God” (116). Jekyll separated the struggle of good and evil and the evil began to strengthen. Jekyll has started to be pulled into the abyss of no control and the edge of madness as Hyde reacts havoc on the people and destroys everything in his path with