“It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it. “Many authors use the idea of pushing our boundaries to an extreme and Robert Louis Davidson is no exception in his novel ‘The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Many people search for secrets to our soul and Dr Jekyll. He will stop at nothing to acquire knowledge and quench his thirst for knowledge. The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is about a Doctor named Dr Jekyll. He tries everything to conquer his curious nature. In the doing, he drinks one of the chemicals in his lab which backfires on him completely. These chemicals turn him into a murderous monster called Mr Hyde. I will be discussing the element of scientific exploration and explaining how much is too far. I will also be discussing how the main protagonist in this story has the trait of ‘need to know’ which is one of the six traits to a gothic protagonist. 

Scientific exploration is about exploring our curious nature and pushing the boundaries of our morals in order to explore the unknown. Dr Jekyll pushes scientific exploration and his curiosity too far. “With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.” He tried every day to push scientific exploration just to satisfy his curious nature and need to know. He pushed and pushed every day in order to find a window to the secrets of the soul. This had major consequences. One day he drank chemicals in his lab in an attempt to finally conquer his curiosity and need to know. These chemicals turned him into a murderous monster “All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.” The consequences for Dr Jekylls need to know curious nature was extreme and I think this happened for a reason. I think that  Robert Louis Davidson was presenting a warning to us not to meddle with things that are beyond our power to understand. He is saying that if we explore too far into the unknown then we won’t come back out the same. I think that Dr Jekyll had it coming. He dived too deep into the unknown and was never able to resurface. He was swallowed by the drug we call curiosity. I think he deserved what he got. I think I reacted in this way because I think what he was doing was no longer helping the human race but it was for his own selfish needs. If you meddle with things you can’t understand then something will go wrong and in fact, did go wrong. “I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders; and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.” This quote shows how you can’t get rid of death. Everyone dies and it is not something you can escape from. If you are trying to get rid of death then I think you should stop what you are doing as it is impossible. 

This novel made me realise that what we have is enough. We should be happy with what we have been given. It is a miracle that we are even on this earth and we don’t need to discover new things just for the sake of it. This novel has taught me that I don’t need to mess with things that are beyond my power to understand because it could cause some very bad consequences. I would recommend this novel to anyone who is looking for a novel on pushing the boundaries of scientific exploration and pushing the boundaries of our curious human nature. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Category

Writing