Comparison to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Introduction

Here we help you draw a comparison with "The Tell-Tale Heart" and the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, based on excerpts from the novel.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tells the story of Dr. Jekyll, who experiments with a chemical that allows him to split his personality. Dr. Jekyll is perceived as a good man, but he transforms into Mr. Hyde to be able to indulge in his vices and commit bad deeds.

Narrator

In chapter 10 of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll is the narrator of the story. Dr. Jekyll tells the story of how Mr. Hyde came about, noting that he sought to separate his own good and evil sides and created a drug that made it possible. Notice that, just like in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Dr. Jekyll is an unreliable as his sanity starts to unravel through his continued experiments.

However, in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the point of view shifts between different characters, such as from the maid who witnesses a murder to a police inspector.

Similar to the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” who displays different behaviour from day to night, the two parts of the novel’s protagonist also behave in contrasting ways. Dr. Jekyll is a normal human being with a complex mix of good and evil inside him, while Mr. Hyde is a cold-blooded criminal: “Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances...