In this quote, Oscar Wilde is making an analysis about the cleverness Dorian’s character has, when he uses his eternal beauty and youth in his favour. This is clear when James Vane goes to Dorian and affirms he is going to kill him in revenge of what he did to his sister, Sybil, who committed suicide eighteen years ago; so if Dorian was the correct men to kill after all those years, he would appear older than forty years old, as James Vane expected it to be . But in that moment, Dorian remembers he has the face of a men with less than twenty years old, so he claims to James to put him under the light so he can see the appearance of his face, and make this rebellious brother to think he clearly didn’t cause Sybil Vane’s suicide, because of…
Love is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection. This is the feeling that the two teens, Romeo and Juliet has. In The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet have a love at first sight moment at a Capulet party. A couple of days later, they secretly get married. Later that day, Romeo is banished from Verona, their hometown because of a murder. Juliet and the friar make a plan for Juliet to live happily ever after with Romeo. This plan goes terribly wrong, causing Romeo and Juliet to both commit suicide since they could bare living without each other's love. Shakespeare uses a sonnet, many metaphors and imagery to demonstrate a theme that love is a very strong feeling.…
Dorian regresses back to a state of the “ID” through a series of events that take place in the book. In the beginning, we see his gentile nature through his willingness to sit for Basil and his charming quirks that attract almost everyone he meets. Here, we see the superego. However, after meeting Lord Henry, he begins to suffer between the “ID” and the superego. After being cruel to Sibyl, he feels remorse and wants to make things right with her. He reaches after his own personal needs, but then faces the reality that he can’t have it his way all the time and tries to make it better. This is where his conscious comes into play. He knows that what he did was wrong and the superego allows him to feel that remorse and make up for what he did. When Dorian decides to kill Basil, he has finally reached his “ID” point in life. He has now successfully regressed to the lowest stage of personality. Thus, Dorian makes a trip down the stages and reveals the possibility for any human being once taken by the clever and cunning devil…
“ I can sympathize with everything except suffering. I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, to distressing.” Although his greatest mistake is that he failed to focus on a person for the good qualities and traits they have rather than their appearance. “Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.” Lord Henry is blunt with his superficial views. Before Henry even met Dorian he was obsessed with him all because of the way Basil had described Dorian. “Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian gray.” He was much aware of what he was doing to Dorian’s innocent mind while talking to him. “Lord Henry watched him. He new the precise psychological moment when to say nothing. He felt intensely interested. He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced.” Henry manipulates Dorian to think just like him, Henry wants him to believe that reputation and acknowledgment are the only things that…
When Dorian saw the portrait painted he soon begins to loath it because “I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day in June… I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me.” He in turn wishes that he was to stay young and beautiful and the portrait was to show all the signs of aging and sin. This is the beginning of Dorian’s troubles. He goes through his life looking young and innocent but all the sins he commits shows on the canvas, “The terrible portrait whose changing features show him the real degradation of his life…He had a secret pleasure of the misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden that should’ve been his own.” Any time Dorian does something sinful, selfish, cruel, or falls to temptation it all shows up on the canvas to mar his idyllic beauty. “A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted…
While a horror story focuses primary on scaring and unsettling the readers, The Picture of Dorian Gray is more like Oscar Wilde's insight of morality, or rather, immorality and its effect on human conscience. For Dorian, aging and immorality had absolutely no claim on his innocent and beautiful appearance; instead, they were vividly reflected through his portrait. Knowing that, Dorian at first showed no remorse or guiltiness of conscience as he sank lower in morality, this lack of guilt being apparent when he decided to attribute young actress Sybil's death - caused by his cruel words - to a personified tragedy of her own. For eighteen years Dorian lived his life in this depraved fashion, until the reappearance of James (Sybil's brother). Afraid that James would seek revenge for his sister's death, Dorian became wrecked with fear and guilt and decided to amend for his notorious life, only to find a new mark of hypocrisy in his portrait. During the course of novel, Dorian's cruel and unprincipled actions brought ruin upon him and many others. The contrast between his youthful appearance and the loathsome reality (the disfigured portrait) indicated how deep Dorian had sunk from human morality. His eventual self-destruction proved to be the only solution to his sins.…
Truly, Dorian is not feeling the emotion of love, but that of infatuation and awe at Sybil’s appearance and ability to perform on stage. “…Imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a little flower-like face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose.” Dorian is swept away by the youth and beauty of Sybil when he sees her on stage, but he is also swept away at her ability to act. Dorian is in love with the idea of the art Sybil portrays, not the girl herself, so when her acting suffers, Dorian's infatuation ends along with the relationship. His treatment of her at their separation is callous and harsh, "He thrust her back. ‘Don't touch me!' he cried…She crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiseled lips curled in exquisite disdain…Her tears and sobs annoyed him." From this passage, one can infer that Dorian’s infatuation of Sybil is due to her ability to bring Dorian pleasure in the form of her acting as an art. He has no need or want of Sybil’s devotion or love; he just wants to possess her art. When she fails at her art, Dorian no longer has any need or use from her since she gave nothing to him, and he casts her aside. This is a…
As a result, Basil's own artistic and romantic idol, Dorian, loses his temper, sanity and morality, betraying him with murder. Presumptuously, Dorian is vainly "aware of Basil's double life... existed alongside a ... world of homoeroticism" (Nils, Clausson), seducing him to visit his contorted portrait. As a shrewd manipulator portraying a duplicate appearance, Dorian shamelessly would much rather eliminate a loyal friend…
Chapter four of “The picture of Dorian Gray” shows us an important development within Dorian’s personality and how he has taken in Lord Wotton’s idea and implemented them into his own life. Throughout the first three chapters, Lord Wotton has been focussed on the most, yet in chapter four Dorian seems to be ‘taking over the novel’ as this chapter focuses upon him and his Sybil Vane. We see Dorian develop and become his own character, driving the plot by acting independently, although still very much under the influence of Lord Henry, as Dorian echoes some of Henry’s ideas.…
Don’t judge a book by its cover. The common quote gives meaning to The Picture of Dorian Gray, especially in regards to the characters. There are several minor characters in the book, but only a few important enough to analyze and of course there is the main character. The difference among the characters is noticeable and you shall see that in regards to: James Vane, Sibyl Vane, Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton, and Dorian Gray.…
Allusions and foreshadowing are used throughout to reveal more about Dorian and his characteristics. He is compared to Adonis, a Greek of great beauty, to emphasize on the visual appeal. Another is Narcissus, a man who fell in love with his reflection in a pond and died because he couldn't stop staring at himself. This foreshadows to Dorian’s future in which the infatuation with his appearance will result in a obsession. There is also an allusion to Faust, a man who sold his soul to the devil in return for power/knowledge. This is similar to how Dorian kept his eternal youth in exchange for his soul and moral conscience. References to Sybil’s well-being and threats to Dorian also foreshadow future events. For example, James indicates that something sinister will befall upon Sybil and that he will harm Dorian if he hurts Sybil. This foreshadows Sybil’s suicide and James's attempt to kill Dorian in a hunting…
The portrait physically reveals all the corrupt parts of Dorian’s soul which are usually effortlessly concealed within a person. After Dorian harshly rejected Sibyl and broke off their engagement, the portrait changed for the first time to look cruel. “There was no doubt that the whole expression had altered. It was not a mere fancy of his own. The thing was horribly apparent” (Wilde 66). The portrait shows Dorian’s cruelty plainly, putting him in the awkward position of having his wickedness displayed constantly. After Dorian murdered Basil and drove an old friend to suicide, he visited the picture for the last time. “He saw the face of his portrait leering in the sunlight . . . What was that loathsome red dew that gleamed, wet and glistening, on one of the hands, as though the canvas had sweated blood?” (Wilde 127). The portrait shows physical crimes as well as psychological ones, and anyone who came across the picture and understood that it portrayed Dorian as he truly is, could easily divine what he had done. The material evidence of the worst of Dorian’s character drives him to hide his character in a very literal way. It is difficult for Dorian to accept the picture, because anyone could happen to see his twisted soul whether or not he revealed it, and he struggles with this forced vulnerability. “‘It would not interest you, Mr.…
Initially, Wilde describes Dorian as one who “had kept himself unspotted from the world” (18). This epithet functions as a control to drastically juxtapose and emphasize his dramatic transformation to a man of very little morality. At this point, Dorian’s unique disposition can be described as “one of tabula rasa or a blank slate” that awaits “colorful brushstrokes . . . [to] forever tarnish its originally pure image” (Seagroatt). The inciting moment of discovering Basil’s painting is equivalent to the first blemish on innocent Dorian’s canvas as he reaches the epiphany that he will eventually “grow old, and horrible, and dreadful” while his painting would “remain always young” (Wilde 28). Indeed, it is here that Dorian’s insecurity takes command of his conduct, spurring the commencement of his self-destructive quest to obtain all things…
"Dorian Gray's good looks-we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly" (Wilde3). Some people use their beauty as a weapon and it can be a deadly one. This quote will play a major role in this book and this paper. Basil already knows that Dorian's beauty will cause problems. Basil and Lord Henry have different beliefs about beauty. Lord Henry thinks that beauty is one of the most important things in the world, but Basil on the other hand appreciates Dorian's beauty but feels in order to be beautiful one would have to pay a price.…
which he learns about in a book given to him by Lord Henry. Dorian's unethical…