Graham's Magazine

Is Machiavelli’s The Prince an amoral book, an immoral book, or neither? Fully discuss, illustrating your answer with ideas from the book. Machiavelli has gained a reputation of a cold-hearted, ruthless and cynical man mainly based on his famous book: “The prince”. The book itself is generally considered either immoral or amoral. May my audacious affirmation be excused, but I think that these statements have been made by a superficial approach. I strongly insist that this book is neither…

The “farmhouse” is a crucial setting to my book “The Dogs”. Dark, isolated, dingy, and a discreet place in a small town called Wolf Hollow. One of the main reasons this house qualified for their stay was because it was in a quiet neighbourhood and in midst of a dense cornfield making it hardly visible to transient passerby. Of course, an ideal hideout for a woman who doesn’t want a speculative audience and in particular wants to steer clear of her abusive and promiscuous husband’s company. The…

In growing from youth to maturity, literary characters often develop a new worldly perspective resulting from their own experiences; scholars classify these works that focus on a single event defining a character’s life philosophy as bildungsromans. Set in nineteenth-century England, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray recounts Dorian Gray’s growth from a young man to an adult in the midst of the growing aesthetic movement, with his friend Lord Henry Wotton introducing him to its morality.…

“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.” This is German-born poet Rainer Maria Riike, quote on society’s lack of appreciation for nature. Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul is a Trinidadian author who won the award for literature in the year 2001, he was born Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul in Chaguanas in the year 1932. As a teenager he attended the Queen’s Royal College in Port…

The Fatal Book Both Dorian and Des Esseintes also explore the fineries of clothing, and décor, but more so they strongly draw upon the study of jewels. Dorian wears a dress coated in over five hundred pearls. He could spend an entire day going through his collection of stones of silver, topaz, amethyst, ruby, opal and sapphire. He then explores more exotic jewels and silks that he procures from all over the world. He fills his home with these wonderful treasures and uses them to distract himself…

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…

Dorian is the central figure of the story, everyone else lives their lives around him. Both men and women wish to be in his presence. The women fall in love with him and the men want to be in his company. Dorian eventually fulfills the stereotypical female role in the novel. Despite there being other women in the story Dorian is the one who receives all the attention and it is Dorian who ruins the hopes and dreams of men, not the women in the story. The women in the story are only there to…

The Picture of Dorian Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray depicts the life of Dorian a young, impressionable aristocrat who captures Basil’s artistic imagination and soon becomes a friend to basil. Along with becoming Basil’s friend and muse Dorian meets the famous Lord Henry at one of the painting sessions. Lord Henry is a witty man who enjoys celebrating youth, beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure. Basil reluctantly introduces Dorian to Lord Henry, who soon influences the young Dorian.…

The first appearance of Basil is in his studio painting a portrait of “a young man of extraordinary personal beauty”. Despite Basil’s reluctance, he confesses this is Dorian Gray. The “personal beauty” of the portrait and overwhelming olfactory description creates a picturesque paradise in Basil’s studio, subverting expectation for any sin or immorality. It represents Basil precisely as he is always loving and optimistic, without any callousness, in his appreciation of beauty. Wilde describes…

When the text begins, Dorian is introduced as a flawless young man that was pure and beautiful. Basil’s painting reflects this perfection, and even Dorian is blown aback by his own looks. We are then introduced to his past by Lord Fermor, who reveals his tragic family history that involved the loss of both parents, a tragedy that would result in his upbringing by a loveless tyrant. Dorian is then described as having a unique fascination for Lord Henry, and is one of the few people that were…