The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was read this week to evaluate moral decision making. In this text, a theme of duality by the main characters, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde heavily influenced their decision making skills. There was also another character in this text named Mr. Utterson who also displayed another way of making moral decisions.

To start off, Mr. Utterson was a lawyer who became very curious about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s increasing strange behaviors. He first noticed this when he saw Mr. Hyde trample over a young girl in the street. Mr. Utterson also becomes suspicious of the changes that are made to Dr. Jekyll’s will were it says that all of his possessions will belong to Mr. Hyde. This is when Mr. Utterson really starts to investigate what is going on. Because of the ways that Mr. Utterson handled each situation that was presented to him, I would describe his decision making at duty-based ethics. He is a lawyer, so he upholds the law and is as level headed as he could possibly be. Mr. Utterson stayed calm and collected throughout all these situations, and always honored the promises that he made.

The other main character(s) in this text is/ are Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll used his medical background to create a mixture of chemicals that will allow him to separate his bad feelings from his good character. He begins taking this mixture and is transforms into another person, My. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll, at first, is able to control his changes, but then he cannot do that as easily any more. He begins to fall asleep as Dr. Jekyll, and then awaken as Mr. Hyde. This conversion starts occurring more and more frequently without using the chemical mixture. Dr. Jekyll realizes that he wasn’t going to be able to control the conversions, and to add to that Mr. Hyde’s behavior was getting worse and worse! These two people that make up one person express the theme of duality. It displays the good and bad of human nature by taking one person and splitting him into his good character and his bad character. Dr. Jekyll represents the good character, and of course Mr. Hyde represents the bad. Dr. Jekyll’s behaviors were good, so he is the one who was in the public eye, but his inner thoughts were bad. I found this very interesting because it is just like how most people are. There are always dark inner secrets that people have, but you would never know that based on what you see.

The moral decision making of Dr. Jekyll can also be interpreted in two ways. First, you can see him as being selfish and only taking this mixture to suppress his bad thoughts, so that no one will ever know about them. He was only taking the drug to keep allow his reputation to remain pure. This interpretation can be viewed as ethical egoism. Dr. Jekyll was only thinking of himself in the decisions he made and how they would best benefit himself. On the other hand, Dr. Jekyll’s decisions can be viewed as he’s potentially sacrificing himself and using his own body as an experimental object so that later on others would benefit. Dr. Jekyll in this sense was displaying ethical altruism because he sacrificed himself for the good of others. For Mr. Hyde’s moral decision making, I really don’t think he had a ‘moral compass.’ He seemed to just act out in whatever way he chose no matter the consequences for himself, Dr. Jekyll, or the other people surrounding him.