Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Structure of the picture of dorian gray
Structure of the picture of dorian gray
The picture of dorian gray character
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Structure of the picture of dorian gray
From statues and sculpture, to modern painting and photography, society has revered and treasured art in many forms and styles. Author, Oscar Wilde, begins his novel with, “The Artist is the creator of beautiful things, and those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated.” This quote reveals that Wilde enjoys any form of art no matter what the critics say.
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” This quote is from the novelist, short-story writer, and poetic genius, Oscar Wilde. Wilde was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. His mother was a Respected Writer and his father Sir. William Wilde was a renowned eye and ear surgeon.
After Wilde leaves home, he is accepted into Trinity College in Dublin. There
…show more content…
Even though he committed the murder he feels no remorse to his old friend. Dorian then contacts Alan Campbell, a well-known doctor who is known to rid of dead bodies. Since Dorian and Alan once had a falling-out, he is hesitant to help Dorian. Dorian then responds to Alan with a letter that says, “I am so sorry for you, Alan,” he murmured, ”But you leave me no alternative… It is now my time to dictate terms.” Wilde, Page 143-144. After reading it, Campbell shudders. He then finally decides to help Dorian with the process. After gathering his things and going to the spot of the murder. It takes Campbell a full five hours to complete the process. But when he was done, there was not a trace of Basil to be …show more content…
Dorian then remembers the quote from Lord Henry. “To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.” Wilde, Page 155. To help cleanse Dorian’s inner self he dresses and takes a canister of Opium from his room. Wilde then has a coach take him to a local opium den. An opium den is where people go to smoke the drug from a long tube while lying on their side. There Dorian is very hesitant to relax, due to the several people he recognizes. Dorian then ends up leaving and heads back home.
After many weeks pass Dorian is speaking to Lord Henry about basils death. Dorian mentions if he would believe him that he in fact killed Basil. “ I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesn’t suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as vulgarity is crime… I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.” Wilde, page 179-180. With this quote it is very true that Dorian has hidden his inner self very
Dorian murdered Basil after showing him the painting. Basil was trying to save Dorian’s soul by begging him to confess his sins. Dorian flew into a rage and stabbed Basil, afterwards “he felt strangely calm” (Wilde 152). He justified his actions by saying that Basil was “the friend who had painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due” (Wilde 152). Then Sibyl Vane’s brother, James Vane, came to get revenge on Dorian Gray and ended up dying when Dorian distracted a gunman during a hunt.
trading his soul for his youth, Dorian rids of the good inside of himself. The
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.
Wilde says that Dorian’s journey begins with Ordinary World. He is a young and good looking male. He has a normal life till he met Basil and Lord Henry. He now receives the Call of Adventure. When he met Basil at a party, they become friends and everything is still good until he met Lord Henry. He captured the imagination of Basil and for Lord Henry is how he knows that Dorian can do anything with his looks and perfection. Basil made a portrait of Dorian. Lord Henry made Dorian realize that he is not doing anything wrong and he is perfect no matter what. This is how
“Wilde was under the impression that it is possible to be spiritual and religious, but he found himself incapable of achieving it.” (Pearce, 214). If Dorian were able to first feel guilty for his actions, he could have ended up more like Dantès.
...ely taking over his mind. Dorian, once very naive, lets Henry’s influence easily fill his mind, and pursues sinful pleasures. He tries to use his beauty to influence others in the same way that Henry influenced him. He feared changing and growing old so badly that rather than going by the natural order of things he chose to go down the wrong path which ended up hurting him more than it did anyone else; and the portrait, in a way, offered him an opportunity to hide his sins. Henry was smart enough to hide his sins from the society, and he secretly manipulates Dorian-- the corruption ultimately blinds Dorian and it eventually leads to his own death.
Through Basil Hallward, Wilde implies that Dorian can easily be corrupted. However, Dorian tries to assure Basil that he is not being influenced. He states that Lord Henry "has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the reason that I don't believe anything he has told me" (Wilde 15). The only reason Dorian does not believe Lord Henry is because Lord Henry does not complement him. Wilde infers that if this is the only reason for Dorian to doubt Henry, Dorian could therefore be influenced in some other way. Overall, Wilde shows how a person may deny the warning signs of being influenced.
When Dorian Gray first meets Lord Henry at the studio of artist Basil Hallward, he is fascinated with Lord Henry’s wit and the radical social doctrines that he advocates. Dorian is easily molded and falls for the argument he hears. According to Lord Henry the goal of new hedonism, “to realize one’s nature perfectly…to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream” (198-199). As far as philosophies go this seems rather innocuous until Lord Henry goes on to clarify that, “every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us…the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing” (199). Lord Henry’s advice entices the malleable Dorian, who does not seem to realize that Lord Henry may advocate giving in to every impulse, even the destructive ones, but he does not follow this advice himself. As Basil Hallward informs Lord Henry, “you never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose” (188). Dorian, however, takes Lord Henry’s advice concerning new hedonism at face value and the results are disastrous.
---. The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings. Ed. Richard Ellman. New York: Bantam Dell, 1982.
Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 and led a normal childhood. After high school, Wilde attended Oxford College and received a B.A. in 1878. During this time, he wrote Vera and The Importance of Being Earnest. In addition, "for two years Wilde had dressed in outlandish outfits, courted famous people and built his public image" (Stayley 317). Doing so earned Wilde a job with Rich...
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril” (4). Oscar Wilde criticizes Victorian culture as he implies that too many people read and analyze the surface or read the symbol, but not both. In order to properly understand a piece of literature, the reader must interpret both surface and symbol. Dorian Gray fails to do this as he interprets merely the surface of the portrait and also of the yellow book, but he fails to investigate the symbol of each piece of art.
Basil wants Dorian to go back to his old ways. It is at this point that the reader can see that Dorian is actually being affected by his conscience, something that has not been seen in him since the beginning of the book. It is at this point that Dorian begins to go back to how he was before and feels the need to reform. However, Dorian is unable to accept how drastically he himself has changed, and attempts to excuse it. This can be seen when Dorian cries, “Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil.” Dorian is showing despair, proving that he realizes that he understands that he has committed many sins and thrown away his life, but still wants to explain it away. Despite this, Dorian attempts to shock Basil by showing how drastically his painting has changed to reflect what Dorian has done. However, Basil instead prays for Dorian and shows him love, which Dorian cannot accept. Dorian kills Basil, but realizes that he has made a mistake. He starts trying to reform in order to get rid of the ugliness of the picture and return it to how it was
In "The Critic as Artist," Oscar Wilde writes that literature is superior to the graphic arts, because unlike paintings of sunsets or portraits or other related forms of art, literature is "soul speaking to soul in those long-cadenced lines, not through form and colour alone…but with intellectual and emotional utterance, with lofty passion and with loftier thought, with imaginative insight, and with poetic aim" (2289). Wilde goes on to express that graphic art isn't really anything that special. People might try to interpret, for example, the meaning of a sculpture, and think that it has a deeper significance that what it actually does. Wilde thinks that the artists that paint or sculpt simply make their art because it is pleasing to the eye, with colors that complement each other or "simply with certain arrangements of lines and masses" (2290), and that "it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautiful thing its myriad meaning" (2290). He does say that art is very beautiful, but because it has no real meaning and is just open to various interpretations from anyone, it is inferior to Literature, which "shows us… not merely the meaning but also the mystery of Beauty, and… solves once and for all the problem of art's unity" (2293).
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.
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 corruption. Before we examine the quality of the error that Dorian Gray commits, we should first examine his friends and their relation to him, because Dorian falls into this error with a little help from his friends. 1. What is the difference between a. and a The relationship between Dorian Gray and Basil Hallward.