Tragic Character Flaws in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Monkey’s Paw

In the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the main character Dr. Henry Jekyll is a respectable doctor who experiments to separate his good and evil sides from each other. Dr. Jekyll eventually runs out of the contaminated potion and his evil side takes over. In The Monkey’s Paw the White family takes possession of a monkey’s paw that had a spell put on it granting three men three wishes. After not knowing what to wish for and the urging of his wife and son, Mr. White makes his wishes and realizes there are consequences for his choices. In The Demon Lover the character Mrs. Drover goes back to her old house in London to transfer items to her new home. She finds a mysterious letter and realizes she never knew her former fiancé completely and is terrified for the day she would see his face. While she was on the way back to her current home, she gets abducted by a taxi driver who she recognizes as the soldier she said goodbye to twenty five years ago. In The Possibility of Evil, the main character is an old lady who sends letters to clean her town of evil and eventually gets caught. The novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, the short stories The Monkey’s Paw written by W.W. Jacobs, The Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen, and The possibility of Evil by Shirley Jackson all have characters who experience a downfall because of a tragic flaw.

In the novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the well-known and well liked doctor in London does not want to ruin his respected reputation with the satisfying wrongdoings of his other side. Dr. Jekyll wanted his two identities to be separated so that “the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleas...

... middle of paper ...

...use of her passion of keeping the world free of evil. In the world today there are many cases of people who do not get help when they might have PTSD until they have already hurt others. When any event causes the sufferer to remember the feelings associated with how they felt during the event that caused them to have post traumatic stress disorder, their rage could get hard to control if they do not get the help they need. In these characters and every human in real life, there is good and there is bad. Jekyll did not want to be caught being a criminal, the Whites’ tried to be sensible about their wishes but still took a wish they did not need, Mrs. Drover feared and worried too much, and Miss Strangeworth did not mind her own business. We as humans judge others, worry too much about not so important things, do bad sometimes, but we can also choose to do good.