How Do Stevenson And Golding Reveal The Characters Of Edward Hyde And Roger In their Texts? Essay

In Golding’s ‘Lord of The Flies’ and Stevenson’s ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ there are main characters of evil, Hyde and Roger. Their characters are revealed skilfully in the texts by the authors. Their characters are uncovered though various characteristics such as their names, where they live, their description and their actions and crimes. ‘Hyde’ from ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ has an extraordinary name; it is a metaphor of ‘Hide’, this is used because after he has committed his crimes he is very sly and runs from the police back to his derelict house and turns back to Jekyll for example, when Hyde slayed Carew. Roger’s name means spear; this could imply that he has more to him than first thought, for example, a spear is used in the hunt for killing, Roger enjoys the hunt of the sow and has merciless pleasure in the killing. The places Roger and Hyde live, illustrate certain things about them, Hyde for example lives in a house that could be conveyed as anything but homely; it is described as ‘a certain sinister block of building thrust forward in its gable on the street’, this suggests something different about Hyde, perhaps that he too is distinctive from the crowd. Descriptive imagery of him shows ‘something wrong’ about him, his house is used as a metaphor for him, he and his house share distinct features of deformity and neglect ‘in every feature bore the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence’ and him a ‘strong feeling of deformity’. Hyde’s outward appearance is also compared to that of an animal, possibly suggesting that he is not entirely human. Roger’s settlement is also used as an interpretation of Roger, he stays at first with the whole group on the beach, but throughout the novel as the boys break up, he follows Jack and moves up to ‘Castle Rock’, he uses Castle rock as a type of fort, unlike Hyde the place where Rodger stays is the place he commits his worst crime, the murder of Piggy. Roger’s first examples of aggressiveness could at first be conveyed as horrible childish pranks or games, when he starts off by throwing stones at the ‘littluns’, he first aims to miss because he is still held by the thought of civilisation, its rules and the punishment he would receive at home. As the thought of civilisation dies away and Roger realises that his immoral behaviour does not need to be suppressed, as there is no one on the island that can enforce punishment. Roger and Maurice antagonize the ‘littluns’ by walking over and destroying their Sandcastles, ‘led the way through the sandcastles, kicking them over, burying the flowers, scattering the chosen rocks’. By chapter 10 Roger’s ‘childish games’ are so savage and evil, that his cruel instincts kill Piggy, ‘with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all of his weight on the lever†¦.The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from the chin to the knee’. Hyde is exposed to the reader as evil from the very first encounter with him in the book. He tramples over an innocent young girl and after does not seem to show any remorse for his actions. Although Hyde represents evil throughout the book, his wickedness increases somewhat to cause death, he kills ‘Sir Danvers Carew’; he and Sir Danvers are in midst of a conversation when Hyde appears to dislike something that is said, he then flies into a rage and clubs Carew to death. Throughout the novel Roger is progressively revealed as more and more evil, he begins to intentionally hurt the other boys. Roger represents pure evil; he is a sadist and causes pain and hurt for fun. Roger has no mercy; he gets sadistic pleasure by inflicting pain, for example the torture of the pig and of the other boys on the island. Hyde also represents pure evil; his trampling of the girl and the killing of ‘Sir Danvers Carew’ is for no apparent reason, Hyde kills because ‘Carew’ is a wholly good character, because of this Hyde feels the need to harm him. The way Stevenson and Golding reveal the characters of Hyde and Roger in the texts, is very important in establishing what the characters are truly like. Hyde represents evil from the moment he is presented to the reader, unlike Roger who begins in the novel a very introverted boy, he gradually discovers a malevolent side of himself; one that was not able to surface in a civilised world with all of its restraint and punishments.