Morality

Tim Fowler

English 101

Cameron Dodworth

Final Writing Project

11-20-2006

In today's society morality is looked for in everything. When somebody goes to see a movie it could have no plot, bad acting, and bad special effects but one could walk out of that movie saying how it at least had a good moral. Politics go around in circles debating how immoral their opponents are everyday. The world has to deal with what is wrong and what is right just like we all have to decide whether the things that we all do are moral or immoral. Dr. Jekyll had to make this decision himself when he decided to go threw with his experiments after he knew what the effects would be. He had to make up himself whether what he was doing was immoral or not. This parallels Ebenezer Scrooge whose idea of morality was that other people stay away from him and leave him with his money. Before going further one must first know what morality is. According to Webster: morality is particular moral principles or rules of conduct as well as the conformity to the ideals of right human conduct.

Most people try their very hardest to live true to the ideal of right human conduct by living honest hard-working lives and passing these moralities down to their children who they too strive to live their lives in this manner. It is when somebody steps out of these parameters that our society has setup that the things one does become immoral. Such as: gossiping, stealing, lying, or committing murder. All are looked down upon and then the person who commits these acts is no longer considered as a moral person. They are cast out of the part of society, which thinks that the things that they did were indeed immoral.

Scrooge's concept of morality was worse than Dr. Jekyll's because he knew better, he had to know that the things that he would do and say to people were wrong or immoral. Dr. Jekyll had no idea of what of what he was going to do in the state of Mr. Hyde and so he was able to feel less responsible. This is kind of how the world works today. Much of the world goes about it's day trying to do good and live a normal moral life without ever stopping and looking at certain things that go against many codes of conduct that have been instilled in all of us as human beings such as the testing of consumer products on animals or the deforestation of South America.

A large cause of deforestation is land acquisition practices of rich ranchers along with the migration patterns of landless farmers in Brazil. Large landowners wanting to get more land, forcefully remove small farm families from their land. These families flee to the urban areas but are unable to get jobs, housing, and food because of high deflation. Thus they are forced to return to the countryside and find unclaimed land, which they can farm on. As this cycle continues, more and more trees are cut to clear land for those poor farming families with no other option. This horrible cycle is caused because some immoral, money-hungry rancher simply wants more land in order to make more money from which he will spend on all kinds of lavish items that will make his life better and then the cycle continues.

If these ranchers had a few ghosts of Christmas come and show them how badly they are ruing other people's lives just to make their pockets a little bit fatter maybe they would change their minds about all of this greed and the immoral way the are living their life. The problem is that in today's society the almighty dollar is what runs the world. A person today is much more likely to ruin somebody else's life in order to make theirs a little bit easier rather than. That is not to say that five hundred years ago a tax collector would not take more money from somebody in order to make their quota and have some money on the side left for them.

One is more likely to do something to make themselves feel good even at the risk of making somebody else's life harder just as Jekyll became obsessed with the idea of being able to do immoral things when he was Mr. Hyde he seemed to care less if his pleasure led to somebody else's pain and suffering just as when Mr. Hyde trampled the little girl to death. "Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the

corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child's body and left her screaming on the ground." (Stevenson 9) Jekyll didn't even care what he was doing. This parallels how Scrooge didn't care about keeping Bob Cratchit warm because it would cost him more money to give him some more coal to fuel his fire. These two examples are perfect for showing how people's pleasures get in the way of their moral judgment.

If Dr. Jekyll had put aside his petty wants and needs aside and realized what he was doing was immoral he could have saved other lives as well as his own. For the characters in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, preserving one's reputation is very important. The dominance of this value system is obvious in the way that good men such as Utterson and Enfield avoid gossip all together. They see gossip as a great destroyer of reputation just as it is in today's society. Similarly, when Utterson suspects Jekyll first of being blackmailed and then of sheltering Hyde from the police, he does not make his suspicions known. Since he is one Jekyll's good friends he is willing to keep his secrets and not ruin his name. The importance of reputation in the novel also reflects the importance of appearances, which often hide a distasteful part of a person. In many cases in the novel, Utterson stubbornly wishes not only to preserve Jekyll's reputation but also to preserve the appearance of order and respectability, even as he senses an evil truth lurking behind the shadows.

All of these bad examples are obviously not put in, in order to say that there is not any morality in the world but o show how easily immorality prevails over people's moral judgment. Just as Scrooge was not always an immoral bitter old man and is not able to change his ways Jekyll also was not all evil. They both had good qualities about them at one time. It is Scrooge however whom realizes that this way of living isn not beneficial to anybody. Scrooge may have been pushed in the right direction by his three specters but it took his morality to make him change his ways. The