Dorian Gray Master Theme Paper
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is about three men--Lord Henry, Basil Hallward, and a younger man named Dorian--who all have either hedonistic views or depleasuristic views on life. Lord Henry influences Dorian to be hedonistic and only care about beauty and aesthetic pleasure, buthowever Dorian takes it to the extreme and becomes completely enveloped in beauty. Throughout the novel, these two hedonistic men idolize beauty, but as they idolize it, they also push said beauty away.
In Lord Henry's monologue, Lord Henry influences Dorian to view his shallow beauty as more important than his beauty of intellect and inner beauty, saying “Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than Genius” (Wilde …show more content…
Dorian Gray realizes “how tired he [is] of hearing his own name” (Wilde 190) and even realizes that he could be wicked and - at least on the surface level - beautiful at the same time. Yet “he [feels] a wild longing for for the unstained purity of his boyhood” (Wilde 190). Gray realizes that he has “tarnished [...] his mind [and filled it with] corruption” (Wilde 191) and his hedonistic actions towards outer beauty have broken his inner beauty. However, he still wants to be young and beautiful and still believes that the pleasure of being shallowly beautiful are more important than owning his actions. Throughout the passage, he goes back and forth between thinking that youth had “been the fairest and most full of promise” (Wilde 191) and believing that “It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth. [...] His beauty had been but a mask, his youth a mockery” (Wilde 191-192). He goes back and forth between realizing that beauty has hurt him and it is the inner beauty that counts and, exterior beauty is all that …show more content…
Lord Henry convinces Dorian that physical beauty is more important than the beauty of growing old and wise, X , and even as Dorian realizes that he is not beautiful on the inside and tries to fix it by being good, his motives are vain and are instigated under the pretense of being beautiful on the
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is about three men--Lord Henry, Basil Hallward, and a younger man named Dorian--who all have either hedonistic views or depleasuristic views on life. Lord Henry influences Dorian to be hedonistic and only care about beauty and aesthetic pleasure, buthowever Dorian takes it to the extreme and becomes completely enveloped in beauty. Throughout the novel, these two hedonistic men idolize beauty, but as they idolize it, they also push said beauty away.
In Lord Henry's monologue, Lord Henry influences Dorian to view his shallow beauty as more important than his beauty of intellect and inner beauty, saying “Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than Genius” (Wilde …show more content…
Dorian Gray realizes “how tired he [is] of hearing his own name” (Wilde 190) and even realizes that he could be wicked and - at least on the surface level - beautiful at the same time. Yet “he [feels] a wild longing for for the unstained purity of his boyhood” (Wilde 190). Gray realizes that he has “tarnished [...] his mind [and filled it with] corruption” (Wilde 191) and his hedonistic actions towards outer beauty have broken his inner beauty. However, he still wants to be young and beautiful and still believes that the pleasure of being shallowly beautiful are more important than owning his actions. Throughout the passage, he goes back and forth between thinking that youth had “been the fairest and most full of promise” (Wilde 191) and believing that “It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth. [...] His beauty had been but a mask, his youth a mockery” (Wilde 191-192). He goes back and forth between realizing that beauty has hurt him and it is the inner beauty that counts and, exterior beauty is all that …show more content…
Lord Henry convinces Dorian that physical beauty is more important than the beauty of growing old and wise, X , and even as Dorian realizes that he is not beautiful on the inside and tries to fix it by being good, his motives are vain and are instigated under the pretense of being beautiful on the