Monsters vs Ourselves

     A lot of the books that we have been reading and talking about lately have suggested the innate ugliness of human nature.  For example, Dorian Gray uses the portrait of Dorian to show how Dorian's soul is rotting and becoming gradually corroded and corrupted.  In Jekyll and Hyde, Hyde is the corruption and badness within Jekyll's soul.  Jekyll likes being Hyde and he gets enjoyment from it.  Everyone scorns Hyde's animalistic tendencies.  The message of both books to me is that humans are innately ugly.  However I disagree with this idea that all humans are like that.  These authors try to make it seem like people are just bad inside and I think that even now in modern society, we are always blaming people for being bad or saying even that the badness should be celebrated. Why does everyone think that we are so animalistic? I read some of these things in books and see it on social media, blaming people for social problems, acting as if it is normal to be this way and that everyone is at fault in some cases.  Honestly? None of these thoughts or ideas even cross my mind and I have such a hard time relating to books like Dorian Gray and Jekyll and Hyde is because I just don't get it.  I know a lot of people who will do some things even if it doesn't benefit them in any way. They are nice people and they would not do things to hurt people even if they could.  We are born with an innocence that is, yes, eventually broken, but it is what people decide to do with that loss of innocence that determines their true character.  It is a conscious decision and has nothing to do with how we are born.  It is based on how we develop our character and events that happen surrounding our lives.  Some people may have more traumatic events while others do not, and don't become bitter, which may not cause them to have those irrational and malicious tendencies.  Therefore I do not think that the innate tendencies of humans as depicted in the novels to be monstrous, are in fact true.