The fight between good and evil

What’s the difference between novella and novel?

A novella is a fictional prose and it is shorter than a novel.

Novellas contain fewer characters, themes and conflicts than a novel. An example is “The Little Prince” by Saint-Exupery.

The novel is a long narrative in prose, it contains more than 200 pages. It has more characters and themes than a novella. The plot of the novel is more complex than the plot of the novella.

Select exercise

Read the following text about one of the most classic novellas by Robert Louis Stevenson. Select the best option. Correct answers will be in green and the wrong ones in red.

good n evil

Edinburgh is one of the most famous cities in the United Kingdom not only for its ancient Castle or beautiful sightseeing, but also for its well-known writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, he was the man who wrote gothic novella “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” in 1886.

This novella is about a lawyer named Utterson who investigates a weird set of facts related to his dearest old friend Henry. relevance of the story is about the nature of two opposite personalities interconnected to good and evil represented by the nice Dr. Henry Jekyll and the evil Edward Hyde.

The main character Gabriel John Utterson is a loyal, tolerant and smart person, he is also a calm man. However, he becomes a perceptive and inquiring mind after listening to event ever revealed by his cousin Richard Enfield, a little girl was trampled by a terrifying man in which Jekyll was peculiarly involved in some way.

Dr. Henry Jekyll is the most intelligent character; he is friendly, tall and a fifty- year old man with an impressive reputation, but during his lifetime he struggles between his inner thoughts and his acts in public. He found in Hyde a way to escape from that conflict and the doctor expresses that he has power over Hyde, but at the end he becomes than him.

Mr. Hyde is totally opposed to Jekyll, he is strong, small and young whose appearance provokes fear and disquiet whoever sees him. His personality is reticent, sometimes is clever, mysterious, violent, and also he is a cruel man. He was wanted by the police since he had committed some crimes.

Stevenson wanted to portray through Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the duality of human nature as a battle of good against evil. Some interpretations link the novella’s topic to the Victorian era or the period when Victoria was Queen. On one hand, in that period values such as work, saving money or faith were highlighted, but the moral was than being authentic. As well as Stevenson, other writers depicted in their work the tendency to social hypocrisy in that period.

Based in: http://www.uobabylon.edu.iq/eprints/publication_10_21876_1383.pdf

Matching exercise

After reading the text about Stevenson’s gothic novella, match the beginning of the idea in column 1 with the corresponding ending in column 2. There is an extra option.

1 2

Example:

Edinburgh is famous for its beautiful places and... d

 a. shocked Utterson.
b. Jekyll is friendlier than him.
1. “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is a gothic novella; it is also... h c.Hyde is stronger than the doctor.
2. The fact about the little girl was awful for Enfield. It also... a d. its well-known writers.
3. Utterson is more clever than Hyde, but... g e. it was represented in several writers’ novels.
4. Dr. Jekyll thinks he can control Hyde, but... c f. Hyde is uglier and taller than Jekyll.
5. Hyde is more reserved and mysterious than Jekyll, but... b g. Jekyll is the most intelligent.
6. The Victorian era was characterized by double standards of morality and...e h. a mystery fiction story.