Paint a picture of poverty. What do you see and where does it take place? Is it in a city like New York? Maybe it takes place at the dried, barren lands in the continent of Africa. Now, imagine it a hundred times worse, with no proper housing, limited water and sewage system, and lacking food and other general necessities.
Poverty is affecting billions of people around our world and the number is growing with each day. Many people think they can avoid the effects of poverty, but it is something that affects all of our daily lives. Many people see poverty as a person who lacks money, although this is true poverty is caused by many more things than being without money. Just the fact that one in two children live in poverty can help people see clearly the impact it has on our world. Poverty truly does influence the type of care and treatment a person will receive when they need it.
According to the PBS Frontline video “Poor Kids” 2012, more than 46 million Americans are living beneath the poverty line. The United States alone has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the industrialized world. It is stated that 1 out of 5 children are living in poverty. The video documented the lives of three families who are faced with extreme hardships and are battling to survive a life of being poor. All three families have more than one child and could barely afford to pay their bills and purchase food for their household.
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.
“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 again and again.” Wilde furthermore demonstrates that The picture of Dorian Gray is an horror story while portraying the painting. By and by, Wildes selection of words to depict the picture turn it into an awful individual makes the reader
“ We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.” I live in a bubble: wealth, comfort, education, and love. Not everyone in our world lives like this, not even everyone in our country lives like this. I knew there were people that were starving, homeless, abused, or ignored; what I didn’t know was how many.
In a Picture of Dorian Gray the soul is personified to the extent that it becomes more real than Dorian himself to some extent becoming his other self. Dorian ’s relationship with his double, the painting, changes through
Greg Buzwell of the British Library calls it a work of “late-Victorian Gothic fiction”. Using the theme of a “double life”, Buzwell compares and likens the text to other English works: “The idea of a double life – of outwardly playing a respectable role while inwardly pursuing an existence that crossed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour – is central to the plot of the novel. Dorian Gray, once he becomes aware his portrait will bear the scars of his corruption – thus leaving his actual appearance unstained – feels free to ignore the pious morality that pervaded the Victorian era. Rather like Dr Jekyll in Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dorian is able to pursue his debauched activities knowing his respectable appearance and unblemished looks will shield him from accusations of depravity. His ability to have the best of both worlds – the continued acceptance of his peers and the ability to fulfill his basest desires – becomes in itself an important part of his fascination with events.
The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray shocked the moral judgments of British book critics. Some of them said Oscar Wilde deserved to be pursuance for breaking the laws guarding the common morality because the uses of homosexuality were in that time banned. This book was for that time unusual because it had a pretty serious criticism on the society from that time. The novel is about a young and extraordinarily beautiful youngster, named Dorian Gray that have promised to his soul in order to live a life of eternal youth, he must try to adapt himself to the bodily decay and dissipation that are shown in his portrait.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (first published by Ward, Lock and Company in England in 1891). The Writer: Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was an Irish writer who produced work in a variety of literary forms – mostly plays and essays. He was an aesthete, i.e., someone who emphasized beauty and form in literature and art. This was something that was reflected in his choice of themes, which demoted the social and political issues for the sake of the aesthetic, but also in his own style of life and dressing.
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray supports the idea that one should be careful what they wish for, as it may come true. Dorian Gray, the main character, makes a wish that a painting will change instead of him throughout his future. In the novel of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, the deterioration of Dorian Gray, and the way he progressively becomes a worse of a person shows how the author, Oscar Wilde, added himself into the novel as a character to show the world how he sees himself. He is portrayed as childish and unaware of the events happening around him. Dorian Gray ruins his future by committing a multitude of sins that later in life he realizes he cannot fix.
The Victorian morals, which are obstinate and rigid, unavoidably showed its negative influence while it dominated the England society. At the right moment, Oscar
Imagine being so hungry you can’t even move. Having to sleep in a house made of dirt, or being so thirsty because there is no safe drinking water. People around the World face these problems everyday. 328,000,000 children live in extreme poverty, and 1 in 10 people live on less than $1.90 a day. The conditions they live in are horrible and everyone should do what they can to help end poverty and world hunger.
Never the less, it’s ironic how in the 21st century we prize ourself for being progressive when almost half of us - over 3 billion people - can’t even conjure up what life is like beyond ‘the poverty trap’ they are in. We prize ourselves, when one out of every two children is poor. Can you imagine growing up as one of the 640 million kids whom have no adequate shelter, let alone a place to call home? Or the 400 million to whom safe drinking water is simply a figment of their imagination? Or maybe the 270 million who have no means of getting health care?
According to the New York Times, in the year 2009 alone over forty-five million Americans had been classified as living in poverty. The term poverty is often associated with jobless or lower-class people who are consider themselves as “poor”. While there are numerous situations and factors that may cause and lead a person to live in poverty, these cofactors can be broken down into three main categories. The three individual reasons for people become poor consist of instances where these individuals usually have a lack of responsibility, an overcoming sense of laziness, and an underdeveloped process of moral decision making.
