STEP 1: Main information  TITLE  AUTHOR  GENRE  PLOT Mr Utterson, an English lawyer, comes to know about a night when his friend Mr Enfield saw a sinister man, Edward Hyde, hurting a child and saw the man defraying the child's family with a cheque signed by respectable Dr Jekyll. When Mr. Utterson reads that Jekyll has recently changed his will to make Hyde his only beneficiary, worried about Jackyll’s safety, asks him for some explanations, but Henry Jekyll replies that everything about Hyde is in order. Months pass and while Mr Utterson investigates about Hyde and the murders he is committing, Dr Jekyll’s health gets deadly worse, and just when Mr Hyde killes himself, Jeckyll vanishes. Just then, thank to three Jekyll’s letters, Utterson understands everything: Jekyll had discovered how to separate good from evil with a potion, which he drank many times. But his dark part had taken control, so he had to kill himself.

STEP 2: Main themes THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE  The power of Youth and Beauty  Negative Influences  Double life  The wish for perfection  Death  The power of Science  Secrets  Double life  The wish for perfection  Death

STEP 3: Common themes 1- Double life: After Dorian’s wish to be young and beautiful forever, his character is automatically disjoined: His portrait, which he hides in a discreet corner of his manor, shows the results of the lifestyle led by the corporeal Dorian, whose appearence isn’t subject to changes. In the same way, Dr Jekyll’s scientific experiments determine a complete split between his good and evil sides: he is both a respectable doctor and a merciless killer, and his life is defined by the alternation of the two personalities of his.

2- The wish for Perfection: What drives Dorian to wish immortality and eternal beauty is his search of perfection; When he starts to appreciate and love his beauty, instead of being satisfied, he wishes for more, he wants to be perfect forever. Something similar happens to Dr Jekyll. Not fully satisfied about his life, he decides he wants to divide good from bad, to destroy the dark side in every human and create perfect people, that will always act in the right way.

3- Death: Dorian can’t do anything to repair his bad acts. He must kill the monster he has become. He decides to hide his shameful life by destroying his painting, where all his crimes and bad feelings are shown. He takes a knife and stabs the picture. But the painting suddenly reverts to its original form and Dorian’s corpse, aged, withered and horrible, lays on the floor stabbed in the heart. Death is his only way out from the life he lived and ruined mercilessly. The same conclusion can be foud in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll knows that Mr Hyde has taken control on his life and is starting to kill his friends, and doesn’t want to live anymore. There’s no possibility to finally avoid the conseguences of his wrong experiment. Death is the only answer to his problem. He locks his experiments rooms door and kills himself.

Background music Dorian Gray – Extravaganza © Sara K – Youtube (free download)

Istituto Magistrale Isabella Gonzaga Via dei Celestini, 4 Chieti www,magistralechieti.gov.it