The Duality of Man Exposed in Romeo and Juliet

The Duality of Man Exposed in Romeo and Juliet

  To express his view of good and evil in every man, William Shakespeare writes lines that Friar Laurence reveals in the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet which compare man to plants, focusing on the common trait they hold of having two contrasting components in their being.  Throughout history, there has always been a conflict with the view of goodness and evilness in man.

  The philosopher Plato believed that man was born with a natural depravity and was basically an untrained animal who needed society's help to structure, educate, and fulfill his needs.  On the other hand, Plato's pupil , Aristotle , believed that man is initially born with goodness and virtue. 

The issue of man's two sides can be thoroughly discussed over the gothic novel of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Some critics believe that the "creature" was prone to evil from the onset, that it was innately in his being, while others argue that the treatment the " creature" received from humans pitted him against mankind into an evil and revengeful state.  Shakespeare, however, in his extended metaphor comparing man to plants, holds the opinion that there is both decency and infamy in man.  His opinion can be compared to the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, where Dr. Jekyll is innately pure and kind but because he tries to hide the malicious side of his being, it eventually overcomes him completely.
Shakespeare wishes to address the id 111g63b ea that evil can destroy a person and overtake them if it is let in and uses his lines of Friar Laurence as an
aphorism and a warning to mankind.
      The following lines from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet fully portray the author's view of a split of innocence and corruption in man, and the thought that evil is likely and able to destroy man from the inside out.
 

            Within the infant rind of this small flower

            Poison hath residence and medicine power.

            In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;

            And where the worser is predominant,

            Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

 

Translated, these lines can be interpreted as follows:

 

            Within the bud of this small flower

            Poison lives and medicine has potential power.

            In man, like in plants, there is both good and evil components,

            And if the evil is stronger and more prevalent,

            It is certain the plant will be destroyed.

 

In the first line, Shakespeare speaks of a new plant, which alludes to a human baby or a child.  This is the beginning of his extended metaphor evaluating plants to man.  Just like a plant can have malevolent poison or beneficial medicine, man also has an ill and humane side to him. 

Depending on the course a man takes throughout his life, that evil may overtake and consume him, just as the components of a plant can be fatal depending on how they are used. 

With this idea, Shakespeare gives us the aphorism that if man does not try to control the amount of evil in his life, he will end up being the tragic hero of these very lines. 

Through the expression of the words and with the use of extended
metaphor, Shakespeare compares man to plants and portrays the central theme that there is both virtue and vice in man, but if the vice is of a greater caliber, it can be the fatal flaw leading to the downfall of man.
      Shakespeare hints to his audience the life lesson that one should never let evil be the predominant trait in their character because it will eventually eat them like a cancer from the inside out. 

By comparing man to plants, he emphasizes the idea that every man has a dual personality holding both good and evil, in the same manner that plants hold medicine and poison within their buds.

With the use of extended metaphor, Shakespeare holds the idea throughout that man can be looked at in a similar view to man because they share this characteristic of duality.  The aphorism to be shared with his audience is Shakespeare's premonition of letting too much evil overtake the good in one's personality because it has the potential to destroy, just as evil took the life  of Dr. Jekyll who could not avoid it taking over his being.

VOICU LAURA - BIANCA

Engleza - Romana

Anul IV

The Duality of Hamlet's Character

It is often noticed that people have more than one side to their personality at the same time. The character of Hamlet is a perfect example of the duality of human nature as Hamlet's character is both noble and wicked at the same time.
At the beginning of the book the reader sees "normal" Hamlet .

As he grieves for the death of his father, Hamlet is still in shock over his fathers death and the quick remarriage of his mother, he is not sure of what is really going on, thus the duality is not yet present in his character.

Not long after the ghost of old Hamlet appears to young Hamlet, when he meats the ghost of his father and finds out a different version of his father's death his attitude and perspective changes in a heartbeat and gives himself the challenge to find out the truth and prove it. This is when the duality starts to appear in Hamlet's character.

One part of Hamlet's character is noble as he grieves for his father and despises the situation that his mother, Gertrude , has left him in. During some parts of the play the reader might be under the impression that Hamlet dislikes his mother but on the contrary he still loves her even though she seems to have left him cornered. Hamlet is aggressive towards his mother hoping to make her understand the actions and consequences that she has invoked.

The second part of Hamlet's character is seen as wicked as he seeks and plans ways to avenge his father's death. The first plan that Hamlet devises is the Mouse Trap play that helps Hamlet find out the truth and turns out proving Claudious guilty, which is what Hamlet was hoping for. This leads Hamlet to his next step, to plot revenge against the guilty king and bring him down.

With this a new duality is born in Hamlet's character as he fakes insanity or madness.

So this leaves Hamlet with about three personalities, normal Hamlet that the reader sees at the beginning, noble Hamlet and wicked Hamlet, mad Hamlet is part of the wicked Hamlet.

In his duality Hamlet's character portrays the perfect portrait of noble and wicked. While noble Hamlet loves Ophelia and tries to protect her from the "evil" plans of the king Claudious , wicked Hamlet has only one goal - revenge. Hamlet stabs Polonious without knowing who he was and feels no remorse as he believes it was for the better because he was helping the King.

The duality, and collision, between revenge and religion is a powerful one in Hamlet, and indicative of a larger cultural collision dealt with by the play.

The revenge imperative is largely aristocratic and might even be seen as pagan in origin, a need to regain honor through the killing of the one who took that honor. But the religious imperative to act morally and according to Christian dictates is also powerful and prevalent.

What is interesting is that both of these seemingly incompatible modes of life, the pagan/wicked and noble, are prevalent in the world inhabited by Hamlet. So, then, this leaves a play that illustrates both of these ways of life as coinciding and overlapping, and none of the characters except Hamlet seems to see that such an overlap creates contrasts that are impossible to bridge.

Here one might note Hamlet's response to Gertrude : "Hamlet," she asks, "why seems it so particular with thee?" "Seems, madam? I know not seems. I know what is?"(Hamlet I). Indeed, Hamlet does seem to see what is, which is precisely that the world in which he lives has terrible inconsistencies that his fellows somehow can pass over simply because they do not look hard enough to see them. It is arguable that this problem for Hamlet is never resolved. It's a very interesting discontinuity; and it's a vital one to the play as a whole, branching into all sorts of secondary questions about religion and motive, and perhaps even offering a deeper understanding of Hamlet's slow movement to act beyond simply that he was a procrastinator. Perhaps in seeing so deeply to the core of things and finding only inconsistency he lost footing from the "solid" ground from which he might act.

One of the first images that are created to further Shakespeare's investigation of humanity is created by Hamlet in his first soliloquy. This simple comparison brings to life the feeling that the treachery and corruption surrounding him is enveloping all that he is familiar with. No longer is he able to see the metaphorical flowers of joy and prosperity that were once so familiar and comforting to him as they are becoming increasingly obscured by the rampant weeds of vile corruption.

Hamlet furthers his emotional outpouring when he wishes that his "flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew." He clearly wishes not to deal with the corruption that has grown thick around him. He goes as far as to offer his life for such an escape.

This is exactly where Hamlet's character is portrayed as fighting between good and evil and it shows just how much Hamlet wanted to vanish from the earth, but this attitude is shown in a manner that enables the reader to visualize this state of mind and understand Hamlet's suicidal thoughts as rational contemplations. Hamlet is not a suicidal maniac, but rather a deeply troubled man who is too honorable to do anything less then what is right even when the world around him is full of many evil and corrupt individuals that don't share his ethical maturity.

The duality of Hamlet's character is constant throughout the whole book, from the time when he sees the ghost until the end at his death.

Hamlet, who is killed by poison, presents an entirely different message. He dies with the knowledge and respect "Heaven make thee free of it" (Hamlet V II). This respectable death not only promises him a prosperous memory on Earth, but it leads one to believe that he will also be well treated in the afterlife.

Hamlet was a murderer, but this seems unimportant in the light of his motivations. He sought to do what he thought was honorable to society, and this is what Shakespeare rewards him for. He avoided the desires for power that controlled Claudius and remained true to an honorable path.

Shakespeare clearly presented the idea of unselfish ethics to be one of the highest esteem. Hamlet was a hero not because of his ability to achieve revenge, but because his intentions throughout his journey were rooted above self-satisfaction. The various mentalities seen through out the play were brought to an end that was purchased with the value of their respective characters as determined by Shakespeare.

Hamlet's story lives on with honor while those who possessed an insincere character died with disgrace. The moral journey that Hamlet embarks upon proves that the ambitions of a petty person are to be looked down upon in light of the ambitions of an ethical person. Claudius follows his lustful desires all of the way to the throne. He wins in his ambitions but fails in a more important sense. Hamlet, who is viewed as a lunatic and murderer, follows the truly important threads of life to ultimately defeat the treachery that surrounds him, this is Hamlet's duality joined back together as the reader can see the wicked side and noble side joined for the one goal of overturning the evil. In the same way that the flowers in the garden have little control over the weeds that constantly attempt to overthrow them, Hamlet saw little chance of righting what was wrong. He was trouble with the idea that justice would require him to stoop to the level of a vengeful murderer, but in the end fate rewarded Hamlet's strength of character with his revenge without compromising his morals.

Hamlet isn't a horrible character or someone the audience cannot pity for his predicament, but a likeable character who made mistakes and had faults.  The cruel things we see Hamlet say and do in the play are things that make him a human being like all human beings, able to be confused, angry, and simply wrong.  These qualities of Hamlet do not lessen the enjoyability of the play, but make it greater, because it allows the audience, as imperfect human beings, to relate to it better.

VOICU LAURA - BIANCA

Engleza - Romana

Anul IV

The Duality of Human Nature

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde centers upon a conception of humanity as dual in nature, although the theme does not emerge fully until the last chapter, when the complete story of the Jekyll-Hyde relationship is revealed. Therefore, we confront the theory of a dual human nature explicitly only after having witnessed all of the events of the novel, including Hyde's crimes and his ultimate eclipsing of Jekyll. The text not only posits the duality of human nature as its central theme but forces us to ponder the properties of this duality and to consider each of the novel's episodes as we weigh various theories.

Jekyll asserts that "man is not truly one, but truly two," and he imagines the human soul as the battleground for an "angel" and a "fiend," each struggling for mastery. But his potion, which he hoped would separate and purify each element, succeeds only in bringing the dark side into being-Hyde emerges, but he has no angelic counterpart. Once unleashed, Hyde slowly takes over, until Jekyll ceases to exist. If man is half angel and half fiend, one wonders what happens to the "angel" at the end of the novel.

Perhaps the angel gives way permanently to Jekyll's devil. Or perhaps Jekyll is simply mistaken: man is not "truly two" but is first and foremost the primitive creature embodied in Hyde, brought under tentative control by civilization, law, and conscience. According to this theory, the potion simply strips away the civilized veneer, exposing man's essential nature. Certainly, the novel goes out of its way to paint Hyde as animalistic-he is hairy and ugly; he conducts himself according to instinct rather than reason; Utterson describes him as a "troglodyte," or primitive creature.

Yet if Hyde were just an animal, we would not expect him to take such delight in crime. Indeed, he seems to commit violent acts against innocents for no reason except the joy of it-something that no animal would do. He appears deliberately and happily immoral rather than amoral; he knows the moral law and basks in his breach of it. For an animalistic creature, furthermore, Hyde seems oddly at home in the urban landscape. All of these observations imply that perhaps civilization, too, has its dark side.

Ultimately, while Stevenson clearly asserts human nature as possessing two aspects, he leaves open the question of what these aspects constitute. Perhaps they consist of evil and virtue; perhaps they represent one's inner animal and the veneer that civilization has imposed. Stevenson enhances the richness of the novel by leaving us to look within ourselves to find the answers.