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The Picture Of Dorian Gray Essay

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In determining the difference between right and wrong throughout history, there has always been a haze of gray, mixing the white with the black. One knows what is right and what is wrong, but that does not mean he or she will always make the correct decision. Humans will always have a devil sitting on one shoulder encouraging sin and an angel sitting on the other shoulder encouraging morals. No one listens to just one of these voices; there is usually much contemplation over which inner voice to listen to, and most likely, a different moral voice is chosen each time. The human mind is much too complex to be stereotyped as either morally good or morally evil, because it is much more than one or the other- it is both. The common adage, “How does …show more content…

153). Dorian often stared at his portrait in disgust of how it displayed his sins and scarred soul. Just the same, he would stand in front of his portrait with a mirror, happy and full of pride. He even “smil[ed] with secret pleasure at the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should have been his own” (p. 153). However, the more he viewed the portrait, the more crimes he seemed to commit. His greatest sin was the murder of his “friend”, Basil. When Dorian showed Basil the grotesque portrait, Basil was horrified and his initial reaction was to pray for forgiveness with Dorian. However, Dorian was so swollen with bitterness and hate that when he looked at the portrait against the wall, he was lost in the evil of the painting and “as though it had been suggested to him by the painting” (p. 173), repeatedly stabbed Basil with a knife, killing him. Dorian showed no remorse while looking at his dead friend; instead, “he felt strangely calm” (p. 174). Dorian sinned through this murder and through the covering of this murder. After a few days though, his conscience reappeared and he grew nervous. His nervousness culminated after encountering Sibyl Vane’s angry brother, James, who wanted to kill Dorian. When James was shot in a hunting

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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.

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As a result of his corruption, Dorian became the reason Sibyl, Basil, Alan, and James all died. Dorian acted cruelly toward Sibyl and caused her to commit suicide. Dorian’s sudden

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He was incredibly cruel towards Sibyl Vane and caused her to commit suicide. Due to Lord Henry’s influence he does not blame himself, yet he blames Sibyl for acting poorly. As the cruel actions continue Dorian gets deeper and deeper into the lifestyle of Lord Henry, to the point where he shrugs off a loved one's death as it is nothing. Sibyl’s purely innocent personality contrasted with Dorian’s cruel and hedonistic life which shows just how Dorian is developing as a

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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.

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After hearing Henry discuss pleasure and sins, Dorian begins to feel a change deep within as he finds himself seeing the world differently and agreeing more and more with Lord Henry. For example, Wilde writes: “But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself? He had known Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between then had never altered him. Suddenly there had come some one across his life who seemed to have disclosed to him life’s mystery” (Wilde 23)

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He takes a knife and slashes at the painting, not knowing that it is a physical representation of his soul, inadvertently killing himself. His servants find the body of an old man that was “withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage”, identified as Dorian Gray by the rings on his hand. The painting looked over his body, reverted to its original pristine and innocent appearance. In the end, both Dorian and Jekyll found themselves dead in the form of what they hated the most, their

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I thought the most recent chapter of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" written by Oscar Wilde was mostly just explaining how Dorian's life goes on and progresses over time. He contemplates life and the way he will grow as a person and how it will be when he gets older. He is buying lots of beautiful expensive things and as the time goes by he doesn't age but he watches the painting of himself that Basil had done. Dorian is usually horrified when he looks at the painting of him as he ages because it is the painting that changes. He also fears that one day the painting will be stolen which will cause someone else in the world will see him and how he is supposed to look.

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In the novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, Dorian’s attempts at reformation ultimately fail due to self-centered and unwholesome intentions. Dorian spends years living an immoral life, with Basil’s painting bearing all of his guilt and consequences. Eventually, he becomes tired of living an immoral life and decides to change for the better. He describes his first act of reformation as sacrificing his desires so a young woman can live her life without the negative influence of Dorian. He discusses his act of reformation with Lord Henry and says, “I spared somebody.

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At the end of the book, he has lost all of his innocence and gained cruelty. Bad company and objects are what causes Dorian Gray 's corruption. Basil Hallward is a painter who wants to paint Dorian 's picture. He is a quiet and unchangeable man. When he first meets Dorian, they talk about how it was destiny for them to meet.

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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

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Even after Basil heard rumors of Dorian’s horrible ways he did not give up on his perfect image of him. He saw Dorian one ill-fated night on his way to the train and was finally faced head on with what Dorian had done. “It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. Isn’t there a verse somewhere, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them white as snow?’”

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At this point, Dorian begins to acquire the indication to switch souls with the painting, in order to Boyett 2 maintain an innocent complex. The beginning of the soul switch did not cause any harm, his minute cruelty led to small lines on his portrait’s face, while not allowing any signs on his own self. Realizing the soul switching was successful,

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This disconnect between the two underscores how Sibyl killed Dorians love. This is more of a metaphorical killing of love, but Oscar Wilde shows a more literal meaning behind killing their love. When Henry says “My letter----don’t be frightened----was to tell you that Sibyl Vane is dead” (Dorian Gray, 71) Dorian is shaken about how his drastic actions caused Sybil to kill herself. Doiran quite literally causes the death of the one he loves. Wilde used a direct, sharp statements to emphasise the scale of what happened.

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493 Words | 2 Pages

Once he realized it was only a reflection he became depressed and committed suicide. Both Dorian Gray and Narcissus destroy themselves with narcissistic tendencies through both novels. They destroy not only who they were before, but they destroy sibyl vane and echo also. Once Dorian basically makes sibyl kill herself, he sees himself as a monster which only makes the plot of the novel go farther, this is what makes him obsessed with the portrait. Narcissus with rejecting echo gets what he deserves as he falls madly in love with himself and slowly realizes he could not actually have himself as a partner which destroy him mentally and

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As the portrait significantly becomes more hideous, Dorian gradually loses his mind. The reader understands that what eventually leads Dorian to kill Basil Hallward, the only true friend he has, is the constant reminder of the evil found at the heart of Dorian’s nature, as represented by the portrait. In Dorian doing so, the reader realises that not only does Dorian kill Basil, he also kills his only chance of redemption of his soul. The reader realises that the statement that Dorian had expressed earlier in the story was the truth: “Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now.”

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