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The significance of the portrait dorian gray
Wilde's view in the picture of dorian gray
Themes in oscar wilde's "dorian gray
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The researcher decides Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned to be the objects of the study on inferiority and superiority complex causing hedonistic lifestyle in main character. The first reason, both of literary works cover the changing of each life of the main character, society and ultimately the individual. Second, they both share the same social background of the main character in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian, displays a well-respected young man. He doesn’t recognize his own beauty until he sees it reflected in Basil’s portrait, and, once he does, it’s all too late. While Anthony in The Beautiful and Damned is illustrates reaching pleasure as the lifestyle and it becomes a habit.
The portrait of Dorian while being beautiful, had evoked rage and remorse within his soul. He wanted to forever be beautiful. Even in death, he was near
Some feel very strongly about what they know to be certain. Some feel certain about religion, others about love. In Oscar Wilde’s book The Picture of Dorian Gray a character, Lord Henry Wotton, says this, : “The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of Faith, and the lesson of romance” (181). The truth one knows does not always prove to be certain.
Wilde’s preface states that “the artist can express everything,” and he never holds back from maintaining that promise. He presents a character, who like himself is mannered to the ideals of society, but is desperately trying to break away. Never does he ever label Dorian as either the hero or the villain of the narrative; instead leaving it up to the “spectator” to find out how they feel. As he states, “it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” Wilde writes that an author has no ethical sympathies, but will often use his own
“Some day when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel terribly…Beauty is a form of Genius” (16). While Dorian considers that youth and beauty is the most significant fixation, the contemplation is gradually impairing his life. Dorian comes across at the painting and realizes how much he is actually altering. His soul remains dark, while his appearance remains young.
”(Wilde 102). Dorian values youth and beauty over his own soul. Wilde uses the painting as a moral conscience and Dorian’s beauty as a symbol of the deceptive lust humans have for personal pleasures. Through this representation he demonstrates that there is duplicity between reality and appearance; beneath every pleasant appearance may be a marred
Throughout the picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde depicts Dorian Gray as being greatly influenced by Lord Henry Wotton. Henry shapes Dorian and initially stirs the conflict that bring both Dorian and Basil Hallward to their untimely deaths. Their relationship is toxic and negatively affects other character’s lives as well as their own. However, as individuals, though they grow to have a similar outlook on life, Dorian is the only one who truly carries out this way of living.
He hides his own thoughts through the story but in some aspects he does show his own perspective. He uses the portrait of Dorian as a way to express his own opinion. Everything that Dorian does affects the painting, whether it is good or bad. He writes, “For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness. But he would not sin.
His idolization of Dorian causes him to let Dorian dominate him. Small as it is, it shows Dorian for the first time what his beauty can do to people. The fact that people are willing to believe and do anything for him because of his beauty. This realization causes a lot of problems later on in the storyline. Lord Henry Wotton is another influencer on Dorian Gray.
Dorian Gray is a handsome, narcissistic young man enthralled by Lord Henry 's new enjoyment. He satisfies in every pleasure of moral and immoral life ultimately heads to death. Henry tells
(Wilde 23). This conversation leads Dorian to wish that he will only age in the painting, and not in reality. Wilde creates a theme of superficiality as he shows through motifs and symbols how Dorian’s sinful and horrific inner beauty becomes excused as the characters of the novel primarily superficially values Dorian’s outer beauty. A main motif that helps Wilde illustrate the theme of superficiality is the colour white.
As a writer one is greatly influenced by their personal experiences with social, historical, and cultural context within their specific time period. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was shaped by the aspects of the world around him. The themes of the text are are influenced by morality in the Victorian Era. Throughout the Victorian Era a deeper movement was also prominent in London called Aestheticism. Aestheticism is the worship of beauty and self-fulfillment.
Relatively all authors are very fond of creating an underlying message to criticize society. Authors do this through social commentary. The book “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is no exception. The author, Oscar Wilde, criticizes the upper class through the consistent underlying idea that people are often deceived by one's beauty and are unable to understand the poison that fills the world is corrupting it. From the beginning of this book, the social commentary towards the upper class begins with the structure of the novel.
In the early 18th century a new genre of fiction prose, named "Gothic Novel" was introduced. The term ”Gothic” used to refer to the German tribe of the Goths. The Gothic novel spread over the 19th century and had the popular theme of haunted places such as castles, crypts, gloomy monasteries; supernatural elements having the role to intensify the atmosphere. The characteristic motifs of the gothic genre were the strange places, the supernatural, magic objects, monsters, demons, science used for bad purposes. And many of them appear also in "The Picture of Dorian Gray".
The reader gets the impression that Dorian will find pleasure in watching the painting being teared apart. Dorian has set all his conscience aside. He believes that the only things that truly have importance are the concepts of remaining youthful and