An Analysis of Marius the Epicurian and the Picture of Dorian Gray

Some people think with a pen, some with a clay and many think using nothing. Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater are in the first classification. As it is obvious, nobody can control what they think and similarly, as they think with a pen, their ability of concealing their characteristics in those books are without no wonder poor. Oscar Wilde claimed in the preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray that "to reveal art and to conceal the artist is the art's aim" but art inevitably reveals artist since it is the mirror of artist's unreachable depths. And ý assert that whatever ý give birth is my child and resembles me. Thus artists are all parents and their children resembles them. So in this paper, I will try to scrutinize these resemblances between the parents Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater with their children The Picture of Dorian Gray and other works of Oscar Wilde and Marius the Epicurean.

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray was written during the late nineteenth century England. The protogonist Dorian Gray is portrayed as a paragon of youth and beauty whose aristocracy and charisma inspire his surroundings, particularly an artist called Basil Hallward. Dorian poses for him and one day while again posing to Basil, he is introduced to a cycnical philosopher and orator William Henry. Dorian is easily seduced by his theories. Lord Henry corrupts this young boy by transforming into a hedonist. Through him, he faces the harsh realities that his physical appearance is fading and he becomes afraid of ageing. He envies the concrete and ever-to-survive masterpiece of Basil and longs for aging on his life without any sign of ageing and decay. Then his wish incredibly turns out to be real. And his sins begin to be appear in the pic...

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...s given by Dorian himself with his own hands. Death becomes the judge of him. But Wilde is more fortunate than Dorian for the prisons judged him in his late years.

As the great Philosopher Nietzsche proclaims boys always resembles their father. Thus I have analyzed the similarities and the traces of parents on their off-springs. And literary creations of them seem to me that they are the mirrors of their real selves. As Oscar Wilde reveals in De Profundis: "Art is a symbol, because man is a symbol." (93) so art symbolizes man. And his art is the symbol of his personality just as Marius the Epicurian is the symbol of Walter Pater's. Consequently, art harbours not only readers and life but also the creators of them. In fiction, Words speak two times; one reveals plot, the other reveals author; whatever a literary men writes, he writes himself but nothing else...