Violence Flashcards
Hyde - Violence
“a girl of maybe eight or ten”
“the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground” - remorseless
Violence in his everyday personality and being “gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me”
“I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at the first sight” - this is so unnatural that a seemingly respectable gentlemen (the way he is dressed) can have such a malicious streak - merciless
“clubbed him to the earth” - vivid, graphic descriptions of violence unnerve the audience.
Inhuman - Violence
“It wasn’t like a man” - emphasis of the pronoun “it” dehumanises H
“less than human” “troglodytic” “foul soul”
Something that is capable of this violence can only be animalistic
H gives into these basal human instincts, which actually makes him less human.
This scares the audience as ideas of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution were popular in victorian England and were opposed by creationism - most people did not want to associate themselves with primative apes and would rather repress those sides of themselves, even though the instincts were natural - an interesting dichotomy created
How Lanyon is destroyed - Violence
From seeing these unnatural displays of violence L is physically and mentally destroyed
“the rosy man had grown pale”
“death warrent written legibly upon his face”
seeing the transformation of J’s “teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws”
After this, his fate is sealed and he is yet another victim of H’s - albeit in a completely different way than his blatant murders. Witnessing the violence that J has to put himself through just to indulge in his desires ends up cauing the death of L as he cannot cope with the images in his mind - it is against nature and the natural order.
Jekyll’s violence to himself - Violence
J had orginally tried to make up for the sins he commited as H by being a “charitable man” who was “distinguished for religion”, however this ultimately fails and the only way he can now make up for his wrongdoings it to commit suicide and rid the world of H - a good act of violence. Also shows that he will be experiencing eternal damnation but he is okay with that - punishment for all the violence against mankind and nature that he has perpetuated.
“the body of a self-destroyer” “I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end”
“his face was so ghastly to see that i grew alarmed both for his life and reason”
