rules determined by each individual to please them. The murderer thinks murder is okay and the normal person doesn’t. Living with a conscience relative to personal desires and not living without a conscience (when it is defined as a set of predefined and commonly accepted values) is the same thing. To understand why living without a conscience is bad, or a trained one, at least, it is first vital to know what a conscience is. Conscience is “when judgement remains, though reason is forgotten” (Voland 251). A conscience is a vast set of values, stances, and/or premeditated decisions to hypothetical situations. A person has to address their conscience when they face a situation they react according to the guideline of beliefs they have internalized …show more content…
The Picture of Dorian Gray could really be called: The Picture of Dorian’s Soul. The novel explores what occurs to a man who in the face of having to make the choice of his life of standing for something, chooses wrong, destroys his soul, and according to the Christian belief damns it to hell. He does this by abandoning his trained conscience because he listens to a deceitful influence that instills in the man’s belief system the idea that pleasing society is a worthless endeavor, it is because of the novel’s similarities to other works of literary merit with this story arc that it is allegorical. Otherwise Wilde would have crossed a line into a very literal piece with less depth to the meaning simply because of his outright and unapologetic call-it-what-it-is style. After all Dorian’s soul is very literally personified as an object in the novel, unlike other novels where the soul is represented by some object or other. Like Foster puts it in How to Read Literature Like a Professor the state of the soul is often represented by things like the weather, “It’s never just rain or snow” (150) because the soul is rarely out of the body like in Wilde’s …show more content…
This setup allows for several sources of parallelism; the most noticeable are The Bible and its story of creation and the Legend (most notably the German version) of Faust, all of which host a voice of reason, destruction, and a character that chooses between them and is corrupted by their choice. That is, under the assumption that no one wants to be doomed- the general public considers salvation better over condemnation; an assumption preceded only by the idea that most people cannot disprove the existence of the soul; the ambiguity of whether it does or doesn’t keeps Darwin’s theory just that, a theory. Wilde could be speculated to have banked in on this fact from the fact that although his novel is fiction, it is riddled with the voice of a confident writer; he describes Dorian 's fall from grace as all but fact. Dorian goes from having childlike innocent to deep depravity in four steps (McCollister 20). First Dorian is painted by Basil. Second Dorian falls into and out of love with Sibyl. Third Dorian surrenders himself to Lord Henry’s influence (maybe the surname Lord has a double meaning in that case), and finally Dorian with his own soul, making his defining decision in an all-out display of Wilde’s candid style stabbing himself (McCollister
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Michael Patrick Gillespie, Editor. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.
In the beginning of the book, Dorian seems to be an innocent, charming, beautiful young man, and even referred to as “a wonderful creation” (ch 2). Dorian is described as this amazing person, with looks comparable to a God, charm that could swoon any woman, and a mesmerizing persona about him with the ability to draw anyone near, yet he seems to be so imperceptive to himself. His attitude of simplicity causes readers to be fond of him, passing their first judgments that he could not possibly be evil. As the story moves along readers see the first inkling that Dorian may not be so perfect. Dorian comments on “how sad it is…[that he] shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But the picture will remain always young” (ch 2). This statement lets readers inside Dorian’s thoughts, showing how shallow and frivolous Dorian views life to be. He places so much value and esteem on looks alone, forgetting that being painted should be an honor, or at the very least...
“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.
Wilde believes that along with the body and mind, “there is a soul in each one of us,” and that these three exist in hierarchy (221). Though Dorian’s soul resides in a portrait instead of his body, it fills the same role as it would if it were where it belonged. The soul, for everyone except Dorian, resides in the mind, while the mind resides in the body. Each affects the others cyclically: the actions of the body affect the state of the soul, the soul suggests thoughts and emotions to the mind, and the mind directs the actions of the body. The Picture of Dorian Gray is the story of a misplaced soul, because it is the unique location of Dorian’s soul that drives his thoughts and actions.
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 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
In many ways, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a retelling of the Faust story. A temptation is placed before Dorian, as with Faust, and he falls for it--offering up his soul to get it. In fact, one of Faust's principal wishes is also to remain young. Faust and Dorian also each seduce a young woman, then lead her to her death, as well as leading the woman's brother (Valentine in Faust and James Vale in Dorian Gray to die in attempting revenge for his sister.
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.
Duggan, Patrick. "The Conflict between Aestheticism and Morality in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray." Journal of the CAS Writing Program (2008): 61-68. Print.
In the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde readers are presented with a vast depiction of the art of immorality in the face of ignorant innocence portrayed by the character Dorian Gray. In the beginning it seems to be a quaint novel on artistry and the paradoxical relationship between two lifelong friends by the name of Basil Hallward and Lord Henry. The plot takes a surprising twist when introduced to the real center of attention, the character of the seemingly innocent Dorian Gray. Upon this introduction Wilde then begins to tell the tale of what a life of secrecy and deception will lead to without the consciousness of a moral threshold and the inescapable burden of Dorians horrid accumulation of sins. The deception begins with a simple shout out to the heavens for the impossible to be granted. This then flourishes into unspeakable acts caused by an Egyptian statue, bringing misfortune to Dorian Gray by giving him exactly what he so desperately desires, thus teaching the world a lesson. Not everything we so strongly desire the world to provide is good for the soul.
In Oscar Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, beauty is depicted as the driving force in the lives of the three main characters, Dorian, Basil and Lord Henry. Dorian, the main character, believes in seizing the day. Basil, the artist, admires all that is beautiful in life. Lord Henry, accredited ones physical appearance to the ability of achieving accomplishments in life. Beauty ordains the fate of Dorian, Basil, and Lord Henry. The novel embodies the relationship of beauty and morality. Beauty is not based on how attractive an object is to everyone, but how attractive it is to one.
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. Wilde demonstrates this point to counter claims that art, including, literature can be regarded as corruptive.
In conclusion, it has been reiterated that Lord Henry's influence, the changes in Dorian, and the immorality of the yellow book further enforced The Picture of Dorian Gray as a moral book. Oscar Wilde allows for those who could understand the real meaning of the novel by comprehending the importance of these three things to discern that he fully intended on writing this novel as a moral book.
Set in the late 19th Century, Oscar Wilde wrote his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is a story about debauchery and corruption of innocence and well known as a "Gothic melodrama." Violent twists and a sneaky plot make this novel a distinct reflection of human pride and corrupt nature.