ipl-logo

Essay Comparing Dorian And Faust

570 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Oscar wilde personality in the picture of dorian gray

On Faust and Dorian

The German Faust myth has been rewritten and adopted in many formats over the years. It’s theme has been reproduced in many forms from books to television, operas and plays, and even a graphic novel. Oscar Wilde applies the tale in his own way in The Picture of Dorian Gray and puts in parallels to older Faust plays by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Christopher Marlowe in his book. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Goethe’s Faust, and Wilde’s Dorian share many similarities and some great differences.

To start, the most obvious differences are in the main character. In Marlowe and Goethe’s works, Faust is a scholar to match the legend and someone who seeks unlimited knowledge. In Wilde’s version, Dorian is described as not being an intelligent person, his greatest attribute is his appearance, which is why what he seeks is eternal youth and beauty. It’s even said that Dorian is a person who exists to take peoples’ minds off of other things and to refresh them with his looks. …show more content…

The two characters are comparable to Marlowe’s Good and Bad Angels that appear at specific turning points in his play in order to influence Faust the way Basil and Henry influence Dorian. Then, similar to how The Picture of Dorian Gray begins with Basil and Henry discussing Dorian (where Basil also begs Henry not to corrupt Dorian since the young man is so precious to him), Geothe’s play begins with God and the demon Mephistopheles wagering on what would happen to Faust and discussing his fate. Then, later in Marlowe’s version, Faustus is shown the personification of the seven deadly sins, much like how Lord Henry gave Dorian a book about a man who committed every sin. Basil is comparable to the Good Angel or God while Henry is like Mephistopheles or the Bad Angel, meaning Wilde’s version of the Faust myth has both a positive and a negative influencing character the same way the older versions of the tale

Show More
Related
640 Words | 3 Pages

No matter how hard Dorian tries to act innocent, his sins cannot easily be erased since he acts pure for selfish reasons, such as clearing his conscience. Additionally, Wilde uses mist to symbolize Dorian’s uncertainty about beauty. As Dorian enters the opium den, “the mist thickened, he felt afraid” (205). In Plato’s theory, Dorian does not completely understand the beauty of something, since he glances it from at a surface level and therefore, remains far from the truth and results in confusion and uncertainty, such as the mist. Moreover, Wilde suggests how before Basil’s murder, Dorian did not appear completely innocent but society could still consider him pure and white if he prayed for God’s forgiveness.

Read More
1021 Words | 5 Pages

While Faustus' practice of black magic and his pact with Mephastophilis condemns him to damnation, until almost the last lines of the play Faustus is conscious of the possibility of salvation if he repents. He is reminded throughout the play that if he truly repents, God will forgive him. It is for this reason that every time Faustus called out to God Mephastophilis is alarmed, because he knows that Faustus could be saved if he only repents and asks for forgiveness. The true conflict of the play is a battle between good and evil, and the prize is Faustus' soul. Faustus himself is represented through the Good and Evil Angles, they represent the two sides of Faustus’s character that are constantly fighting over which way he will turn.

Read More
760 Words | 4 Pages

Cruelty plays a vital role in developing the plot and characters in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Throughout the piece, many acts of cruelty are displayed from Dorian Gray and others that show truly who they are how they've developed from it. Dorian takes on a huge change in his morals and standards because of the influence taken in from others. This influence causes him to only care about his own youth and vanity, resulting in a huge change of personality. The more Dorian becomes influenced by Lord Henry and the painting, the crueler he becomes

Read More
1115 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More
242 Words | 1 Pages

Recalling the story of Narcissus, he was an ancient Greek men that was punished by the vengeance goddess Nemesis for his contempt for women, the punishment was that he felt in love with himself is a reflection of a wellspring. after being punished, Narcissus all the time was staring his reflection in the wellspring and couldn’t separate with his reflection until one day he decided that he couldn’t separate of his reflection that he plunge himself into the wellspring waters and with it, killing himself. Knowing the story of Narcissus, Dorian Gray is the incarnation of Narcissus itself because Narcissus was a man knower by his love with itself and he was so in love with himself that he decided plunging himself and Dorian in a certain way he also

Read More
833 Words | 4 Pages

“The art of pleasing is the art of deception.” This is a quote by Luc de Clapiers that truly applies to Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s Faust, Part I. Through the use of his characters, Goethe shows how one can easily be caught in the tangling web of deception. Throughout the course of the story, several characters are deceived by one another. It seems as if the deception follows a trickling down pattern.

Read More
805 Words | 4 Pages

I would give my soul for that!’” (28: ch. 2), describes Dorian’s Faustian pact which basically mangles his soul like Tom Riddle, and “’He felt that the secret of the whole thing was not to realize the situation.’” (159: ch. 14) refers to Dorian’s emotional detachment, also like Tom Riddle. Even “He rushed at him and dug the knife into the great vein that is behind the ear, crushing the man’s head down on the table and stabbing him again and again.” (158: ch. 13) becomes easier to comprehend when compared to Tom Riddle, and traced back to both men’s intense fear of mortality.

Read More
725 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
750 Words | 3 Pages

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

Read More
997 Words | 4 Pages

As soon as Dorian enters in Chapter 2 of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wildes’ one and only novel, its is evident that there will be a battle between who will have the most influence on his pure, untouched soul. Basil Hallward, a painter and worshipper of art is an optimist and sees only the good in even the wickedest of people, such as Lord Henry. Lord Henry is a charming, self-indulgent aristocrat that shapes and molds Dorian to lead a life devoted to pleasure. Both Basil and Lord Henry represent two important opposing forces in the novel, good and evil. The greatest struggle in The Picture of Dorian Gray is inside Dorian; he himself embodies both pure good and pure evil.

Read More
2219 Words | 9 Pages

His words and painting influenced Dorian’s life immensely and this made him so determined to want to retain his youth after taking a look at his

Read More
873 Words | 4 Pages

From the beginning of the novel we get to see a model of poor and unconventional morality, Lord Henry Wotton, a man who is moved by an ethic current called “New Hedonism” which taking into account society’s ethics (specially the ones from the Victorian Era) is quite immoral. The New Hedonism basically consists in looking for the individual’s best comfort, pleasure and happiness (based on beauty), leaving aside the other’s comfort and what should be morally done. This character with poor morality is who guides the book’s main character Dorian Gray along his adventure. However, it is vital to take into account the fact that Dorian Gray is never forced to follow New Hedonism and that Wilde never influences or invites the reader to follow New Hedonist

Read More
1108 Words | 5 Pages

Another theme illustrated through Wilde’s use of motifs and symbols is the theme of superficiality. The theme of superficiality can be understood as a sense of the superficial view of outer beauty that is shown in the work. It relates to the concept of remaining young, which is an important factor of what is shown in the novel. This is an important part of the novel because outer beauty plays a bigger role for Dorian, than inner beauty does. In the beginning of the novel, Lord Henry and Dorian have a conversation that focuses on the topic of youth and Dorian 's outer beauty – Lord Henry mentions the fact that Dorian has a beautiful face, and later during this conversation, Lord Henry states that: “youth is the only thing worth having…”

Read More
493 Words | 2 Pages

In the book, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Dorian can be seen as a modern day narcissus. The whole novel portrays characteristics from the Greek mythological story about Narcissus and his love for himself. Dorian and Narcissus can be seen in the same way, for they both have narcissistic personalities. Their personalities is what carry the plot throughout the two stories and have such an impact on what happens. The Picture of Dorian Gray and the tale of Narcissus both show the common plot of a young male being in love with himself, which in the end, results in the tragedy of the two stories.

Read More
782 Words | 4 Pages

The Picture of Dorian Gray, one of Oscar Wilde’s masterpieces, portrays one of the most important values and principles for him: aestheticism. As a criticism to the life lived during the Victorian era in England, Wilde exposed a world of beauty a freedom in contradiction to the lack of tolerance a limitation of that era; of course inspired due to Wilde’s personal life. All the restrictions of the Victorian England lead him to a sort of anarchism against what he found to be incoherent rules, and he expressed all this to his art. His literature is a strong, political and social criticism. He gave a different point of view to controversial topics such as life, morality, values, art, sexuality, marriage, and many others, and epigrams, for what he is very well known, where the main source to the exposure of his interpretations of this topic.

Read More

More about Essay Comparing Dorian And Faust

Related Topics

Open Document