Oscar Wilde's 'The Young King' is the tale of a young man's metamorphosis, through a dream quest, that opens his eyes to the heart rendering struggle of the poor, who are exploited by the rich and the powerful to satisfy their own selfish needs. The change that takes place in the Young King reflects his attainment of the virtue asked for in Christ's message.
The story begins with "the night before the day fixed for his coronation" and the young king, "being but sixteen years of age" sits alone in his opulent chambers adorned with rich and beautiful things. The boy who had been bought up by a peasant in the forest had a great love and fascination for beauty. Similarly "All rare and costly material things had certainly a great fascination for him" and his eagerness to procure them had sent merchants to all corners of the globe to get them.
But above all else, it was the robe that he was to wear at his coronation, made of tissue gold, the "ruby studded crown and the sceptre with its rows and rings of pearls" that mesmerized him. On that tranquil night when it struck midnight and he had been "disrobed with much ceremony", he fell asleep in no time and this was the dream he had.
He thought he was standing in a dark, dingy room "admits the whirr and clatter of many looms" with many "gaunt figures of weavers bending over their cases" They were tired yet worked hard and incessantly. "Their faces were pinched with famine and their thin hands shook and trembled." When the Young King asks one of the weavers who his master is, weaver cries out that he is just like him except that his master "wears fine clothes" while he himself "go in rags"
The young king reminds him that it was a free land and he was no man's slave. To which the weaver replies that "in war the strong make slaves of the weak and the in peace the rich make slaves of the poor." He goes on to speak of how the poor are deprived and exploited by the poor by bringing out the bitter irony of how they "tread out the grapes and another drinks the wine." He then talks of the sorrow-filled life of these workers. At the end he states young king wouldn't know as he isn't one of them as his "face is too happy.
Maintaining feudal conditions through violence and intimidation, the army holds the populace in a constant state of fear. Guaranteeing that the peasants stay ill and in need furthers the necessity that they work to stay alive, but prevents them from doing so. This is the paradox of the poor worker, but one the army does not see. The army blindly kills anyone who tries to help the peasants, murdering all the doctors and priests that enter the villages. They do so to keep the peasants in need and in ignorance, to prevent them from learning another way of life. Lacking knowledge of the outside world ensures that the peasants will remain in the plantations, because fear of the unknown is stronger than fear of the known. Acting as feudal knights, the army forces people into the feudal plantation relationship using fear and intimidation.
The two young men receive from the King a commission which, whatever the King's secret intentions may be, is honorable. Hamlet, the King in fact tells them, is not what he was. The cause of the change "I cannot dream of."
In the passage a servant describes the class difference between himself and his masters. He is discontent servant whose ideas about his masters portrays his belittling and resentful attitude towards them.
In the midst of a crisis, many people rely on their human instincts to quickly respond to the situation. Society idolizes these types of hero’s, and, often times, awards them medals for their courageous deeds. George Clemenceau, a French statesman from World War 1, said “A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he is not a man of action… You must act as you breathe.” While Clemenceau applauds immediate action, he fails to recognize that many situations simply become worse because of immediate decisions. When crisis’s strike, one should not act quickly and instinctively, but should evaluate the situation and asses the right course of action.
I think this because as I was reading the book I could see that Lord
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray; For Love of the King. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1993.
This fairy-tale like story not only entertains the readers, it also educates them about the distinctions of the social class system in this era. The author of this poem successfully introduces his audience to a royal king and queen, a prestigious bishop, and a brave and honorable knight. Furthermore, the writer cleverly uses these characters to enlighten his readers to the inner workings of this “pyramid of power” and demonstrates how this social class system effects social interactions in the fourteenth century. While the author of this poem is unknown, there is no questioning the quality of this wonderful work of literature and the value it possess in regard to understanding the social class distinctions of the fourteenth century.
The Picture of Dorian Gray can be defined as a symbolic representation of a dialectic between two aspects of Wilde's personality. Dorian is an archetypal image by which both aspects are fascinated. This suggests that his behaviour symbolizes Wilde's unconscious (i.e. unacknowledged) attitudes. Dorian is characterized by his evasiveness and his obsession with objets d'art. For example, when Basil comes to console him about Sibyl's death, he is unwilling to discuss the matter. He does not want to admit the possibility that his behaviour was reprehensible. He tells his friend: "If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives reality to things" (107). Later, after murdering Basil, he again seeks to avoid acknowledging what he has done: "He felt that the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation" (159).
Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband Oscar Wilde (1845-1903) lived an outrageous and controversial life which was well publicized and condemned, as his life defied the strict social mores of the time. He was put into this public position due to the success of his plays which challenged Victorian earnestness while being hilariously funny. His plays, in particular An Ideal Husband, 1895 portray Victorian society as viciously hypocritical at it's worst and laughably pretentious at it's best. Wilde expressed this point of view in An Ideal Husband through the rich use of plot development, construction of characters, dramatic irony, hyperbole, witty and epigrammatic repartee and satire. The central plot of An Ideal Husband begins with the antagonist, Mrs Chevely, tries to blackmail Sir Robert Chiltern (one of the protagonists) with a secret from his past.
According to two female characters in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Ernest is a name that is typically desirable for a husband and represents high social status and wealth. Earnest, on the contrary, according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, means to be “serious, sincere”, or, in other words, honest (“Earnest”). Within the irony of the title of Wilde’s play itself, the hypocrisy of the high social class of the Victorian era is revealed. Wilde himself said of the play in one of his letters to Lord Alfred Douglas from Worthing, “The real charm of the play, if it is to have a charm, must be in the dialogue. The plot is slight…but…adequate” (Ericksen, 145).
Oscar Wilde was born in October 16, 1854, in the mid era of the Victorian period—which was when Queen Victoria ruled. Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901.While she ruined Britain, the nation rise than never before, and no one thought that she was capable of doing that. “The Victorian era was both good and bad due to the rise and fall of the empires and many pointless wars were fought. During that time, culture and technology improved greatly” (Anne Shepherd, “Overview of the Victorian Era”). During this time period of English, England was facing countless major changes, in the way people lived and thought during this era. Today, Victorian society is mostly known as practicing strict religious or moral behavior, authoritarian, preoccupied with the way they look and being respectable. They were extremely harsh in discipline and order at all times. Determination became a usual Victorian quality, and was part of Victorian lifestyle such as religion, literature and human behavior. However, Victorian has its perks, for example they were biased, contradictory, pretense, they cared a lot of about what economic or social rank a person is, and people were not allowed to express their sexuality. Oscar Wilde was seen as an icon of the Victorian age. In his plays and writings, he uses wit, intelligence and humor. Because of his sexuality he suffered substantially the humiliation and embarrassment of imprisonment. He was married and had an affair with a man, which back then was an act of vulgarity and grossness. But, that was not what Oscar Wilde was only known for; he is remembered for criticizing the social life of the Victorian era, his wit and his amazing skills of writing. Oscar Wilde poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” typifies the Vi...
In analyzing Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, concepts such as influence and the origin of evil in Dorian Gray play an exceptionally valuable role in understanding the motives of the characters. Although some critics argue characters such as Lord Kelso significantly influence Dorian’s corruption, Lord Henry Wotton’s toxic personality undeniably impacts Dorian the most. Throughout the course of the novel, Lord Henry remains the ultimate source of evil and uses deception and persuasion to poison Dorian from a naïve boy to a destructive monster.
A very intelligent novelist, Oscar Wilde, catches his reader’s attention in his satirical play, An Ideal Husband, through a humorous drama filled political scandal and blackmail. Wilde sucks his audience into the romantic comedy by placing the reader with the characters throughout all their battles—in which he points out their bad habits and their faults. Wilde accomplishes drawing readers in by creating the satirical message of his play through satirical elements such as exaggeration, sarcasm, and irony.
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to me emphasis the corruption that comes from obsessing about aesthetics and the idea that looks are the only things that matter. In this modern era novel Basil Hallward is a benevolent artist who paints a portrait of the young attractive man named Dorian Gray. After speaking with Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian makes a wish while looking at his painting and it would be this wish that turned into a curse that ruined Dorian for Basil and ruined the world itself for Dorian. "If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that" (Wilde 109). It’s in this action that Dorian sold his soul to the Devil though in this cause the Devil has a name, Lord Henry Wotton. Dorian lives his life of indulgence based upon a book given to him by Lord Henry, and