This essay will explore the ways in which R.L. Stevenson presented good and evil in his novel 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', using symbolic opposites as metaphors to describe the natures of certain people in the, for example Mr. Hyde, Dr. Lanyon etc. The gothic/ Victorian setting for this novel ties in with the 'good and evil' stance in which the appearances of certain people and objects can be a deceitful to the reader. Stevenson sets this novel in the Victorian period when there was a thin border between rich and poor, civilisation and barbarism, and occasionally good and evil;...
his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grown pale, his flesh had fallen away; he was visible balder and older." This shows us that as well as Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Lanyon a victim of Hyde's evil, and also a victim of his own curiosity to know the explanation to Jekyll's odd character later in the novel. This also tells us that Stevenson represent his idea of how easily it is to become a victim of evil through Dr. Lanyon, who we see as a person who is an even combination of good and evil.