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Oscar Wilde’s novel, Picture of Dorian Gray, portrays the dichotomy of the double life led by Dorian Gray.1 The contrast between the portrait and Dorian personifies the universal battle of sin versus morale and ultimately serves as a moral compass for society.2 Dorian’s development of a double life identifies with the results of sociological oppression leading to confinement.3 The development of this contrasting lifestyle inevitably influences a fatal deterioration of his soul and heart.4 Oscar Wilde’s exaggeration of the effects of the double life of Dorian Gray within his novel Picture of Dorian Gray ultimately conveys the degradation due to a confinement of the soul, and personifies the dualism between private and public lives.5
The development of Dorian’s double life discreetly implicates the confinement of homosexuality due to a lack of liberation.1 Before his confrontation with sin, Dorian leads a lifestyle of spiritual freedom and aesthetic oblivion.2 Dorian’s moral corruption does not arise until the forcible fragmentation of his identity when Basil asserts his desire to “stay with the real Dorian,” while referring to the portrait of Dorian.3 His corruption emerges when he begins to feel a “passion for sensations,” which results in a constant fluctuation of emotional stability and discontinuity of his puerile innocense.4 Wilde finalizes Dorian’s breakaway from realism through his proclamation that the portrait was to “bear the burden of his shame,” which foreshadows his shameful future and the degradation of his image.5 The implementation of a double life reflects the beginning of his battle with sin versus morale, and even more intuitively his expression of homosexuality versus traditional relations.6
Dorian’s acceptan...
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...enation of the portrait and withering of the corpse, which directly references the implicated sexuality of Dorian. 1The restored wonder of youth reflects an idealized homosexual spirit before such labels of homosexuality existed.2 Dorian’s corpse, decayed and withered, acts as evidence of his false public life.3 Wilde reveals the true sin of Dorian’s nature as the shutting away of himself, which erases when he frees himself of the constraints of social obligations.4 Furthermore, Wilde’s identification with the character and double life of Dorian Gray reveals the irony of Dorian’s need to hide himself due to the constraints and uptight morale of society.5 The devastating effects of Dorian Gray’s double life reflect the confinement of his soul, and Oscar Wilde uses this duplicitous life of Dorian to ultimately scrutinize society for a lack of societal acceptance.6
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Michael Patrick Gillespie, Editor. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.
Obsession in its nature is toxic; it turns people into gods, and leaves no room for their actual selves. Celebrities are the idols of the modern world, where ever they go, a fan follows them dying to get their attention. Dorian Gray, who was loved by nearly all of London for his charm and beauty, who’s biggest fan, Basil, worship of him lead to bitterness. The theme of obsession in The Picture of Dorian Gray is seen through both those who worship Dorian Gray, and the portrait, which is the object of Dorian's obsession. Although Wilde displays obsession through Basil's worship of Dorian, and even Dorian's obsession with himself and his youth, the modern day celebrity is a parallel to Dorian, who is worshipped by many at first for their beauty, wealth or fame, but the nature of the worship eventually leads to chaos.
“The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a novel written by Oscar Wilde. The story takes place in England, where the artist Basil Hallward paints a portrait of the young and beautiful Dorian Gray. During his stay at the artist’s studio, he gets introduced to Lord Henry who later becomes one of the most influential people in his life. Dorian Gray becomes aware of his amazing beauty and youthfulness due to the portrait and wishes that the portrait ages instead of him. His wish comes true, Dorian remains beautiful and youthful while the portrait changes. Lord Henry becomes his best friend and motivates him to live in abundance, to sin and always strive for beauty. After a while, Dorian discovers that his portrait doesn’t only age, but also changes face expression as a result of all his sins and evil deeds. Dorian gets anxious by the fact that the portrait shows his evil soul and is scared that somebody will see it, therefore he hides it. The portrait haunts Dorian although it’s hidden. As Dorian’s sins gets worse, he feels that he can’t handle the pressure anymore and decides to destroy the portrait that shows his true self.
A critical analysis of Oscar Wildes only novel would yield that it is in fact a homosexual allegory of doomed, forbidden passion. The relationship between Lord Henry and Dorian, as well as Basil and Dorian is, clearly Homoerotic and must’ve shocked Victorian society.
The novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde shows the life of three men who are affected by art in the Victorian society. In Victorian times men were expected to provide for himself and his family, accumulate wealth, exemplify good morals and prove his masculinity. If a man did not show one of these qualities in the Victorian time his masculinity would be questioned. In the novel these men show three different sides to masculinity. Each character finds himself unhappy with the role he is forced to play in order to prove his masculinity. For them it seems in order to be successful or achieve happiness they must push past the gender roles society has placed on them. Basil Hallward represents the artist, Dorian
In society, there has constantly been the question as to whether people can change or not. Author Oscar Wilde proves in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, that one can. The question he poses to his readers is “What kind of transformation is shown by the protagonist Dorian Gray: good or bad?” It is possible to think that Dorian Gray has become a better person, not for others, but for himself since he lives in the pursuit of pleasure and always achieves it. However, as it is demonstrated by the portrait, the damnation of the lives of others can provoke damage to one’s conscience and soul. Dorian’s soul is ruined gradually by his hedonistic adventures, eventually failing to redeem his actions, but not before he leaves a devastating path of destruction and experiences self-inflicted destruction.
In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray goes through the Hero’s Journey because of the challenges he had been through, the way he transformed, and his crisis.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a rich story which can be viewed through many literary and cultural lenses. Oscar Wilde himself purposefully filled his novel with a great many direct and indirect allusions to the literary culture of his times, so it seems appropriate to look back at his story - both the novel and the 1945 film version - in this way.
In "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde, we see a beautiful young man who makes tremendous efforts to transform the actual world into the idealistic world of art, dreams and sensations. Dorian's quest, however, culminates in his ultimate tragic destruction. Given that Dorian lives a corrupt life, one is likely to focus on the negative aspects of his character. In spite of his significant character flaws, Dorian Gray may still be considered a hero. This essay will examine Dorian's degradation from the innocent world to the vicious, sensation-oriented world. The elements contributing to Dorian’s status of tragic hero will then be discussed.
Oscar Wilde`s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is written primarily out of the aesthetic movement of the Nineteenth Century. Therefore, the text contains a profuse amount of imagery which reflects the concepts of beauty and sensory experiences. By taking the aesthetic approach, Wilde was able to revive the gothic style through grotesque imagery of the portrait and the character whose soul it represents. Wilde is not using gothic elements to shock his audiences; rather he uses the gothic to capture the hideousness of Gray`s corruptness which leaks out of the painting and into the tone of the entire text.
He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. ”(Wilde 13). The words of an honored role model can easily persuade even the purest of hearts into the darkness of crime and evil, such as Dorian Gray. At this moment, Gray falls victim to the flourishing words of Lord Henry, who manipulates Gray from a timid and shining boy to nothing but a shallow man who commits capital crimes to conceal his secret.
Wilde, Oscar, and Michael Patrick. Gillespie. The Picture of Dorian Gray: Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds, Reviews and Reactions, Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2007. Print.
The picture of Dorian Gray. The Electronic Classics Series, The Pennsylvania State University. p. 3/ Retrieved January 3, 2014 from http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/oscar-wilde/dorian-gray.pdf
In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray reads a yellow book given to him by mentor-friend, Sir Henry Wotton. In the years after reading the book, Dorian Gray transforms from the pure and innocent young man he was into a two-faced immoral man. The reason behind the Dorian's degradation is never explicitly mentioned in Wilde's novel, which begs the question of whether literature has the ability to degrade a person. The influence of literature has the potential to corrupt one’s mind, but whether it does is dependant on the state of the reader.
Though Wilde wrote in the preface to this book that, "To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim", we can still trace the shadow of the author himself in all of the three major characters. Basil Hallward, the artist who painted the picture of Dorian Gray, probably has a homosexual attachment to the young Dorian. And as a homosexual himself (or to be exact, bisexual, because he also loved his wife and two sons), Wilde here might be commenting on the enforced secret homosexuals' lives in the late nineteenth century. Seemingly striving after impersonality and aesthetic perfection in his work, Basil feels the greatest anxiety of having put "too much of himself" into his picture of Dorian (Chapter 1, page 20) that he can't exhibit it. To display his work of art in public would, in a sense, amount to exposure of Basil's attraction to Dorian Gray.