Gray

At the start of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian Gray is a face that is both literally and figuratively untouched by external forces. His own ideas about society, morality, youth, beauty are barely formed. They exist as soft and malleable globs of clay that do not yet have any tangible substance or definitive shape. Consequently, throughout the entirety of Wilde’s novel, Gray is molded by the myriad of internal and external forces that bombard a person throughout their lives. By the…

In 1960, the wolves who had covered most of the United States found themselves hunted; a hunt that would last until the 1960’s when they would be put on the endangered species list after their populations plummeted. The species of Gray wolf that was most common in the U.S. was almost hunted to extinction because complaints from ranchers and farmers that the wolf was a mindless, selfish, gutless killing machine. However, it is obvious through careful studying and monitoring that the wolves are a…

Sinning Isn’t Winning The Picture of Dorian Gray: A novel that shows the drastic influence of a sinful person on a youthful, loving individual. Dorian Gray starts out as a young and innocent character, but over time, with the influential push of Lord Henry Wotton, develops an ugly soul with a still-youthful face. Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland on October 16, 1854. He wrote many fairy tales along with other works. Some of these include The Soul of Man, Lady…

facilitate a need to show the true beauty of Dorian Gray. It is not just a group of men who desire to be around Dorian, it is also the women. Dorian disregards all the attention he receives because of his obsession with his own personal beauty and the destruction of his own beauty in the portrait. Women are simply used as a tool to demonstrate how beautiful Dorian is, and are portrayed as being weak and naïve.…

To illustrate my point, regarding the key theme Wilde uses symbols and literary devices in order to highlight authority of one leading to negative consequences. Dorian was innocent in the beginning of the book and changed into a criminal by the middle. The influence behind the cruel man was Lord Henry; Dorian’s manipulative “friend”. Henry’s lectures and cynical attitude reeled Dorian in and soon led to his negative behavior. For example, the portrait, a key symbol in the novel is a mirror image…

novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, that serves as a contradictory model against Victorianism for the sake of art. It directs on Wilde’s uprise against morality and the embrace of a hedonistic lifestyle. An…

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all” (Wilde 0). These are the words of Oscar Wilde, the author of the 1890 philosophical fiction novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, who is prefacing said novel with the notion that art, be it books, paintings, music, or anything similar, should only serve one purpose: to be admired. Throughout this novel, he presents the argument of aestheticism: that art should not hold an inherent moral…

the eyes of men but women as well. The Picture of Dorian Gray displays the aftereffect of disregarding women. In this novel, the way the male characters treated the women it was as if the women were not important and this was shown through the evil acts of Dorian Gray. Summary of Contents Dorian Gray displayed his first act of evil on Sibyl Vane, an actress that he falls in love with, when he talked to her…

there is no art to them, but an actress lives her art when she performs and is thus worthy of his love. When Dorian sees Sibyl acting, he sees her through her art, and thus at her most beautiful. Wilde states in the preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray that "all art is quite useless" and must be "[admired] intensely" because…

Shakespeare’s play, the Tempest (1611) is an abortive revenge drama that focuses on the character of Prospero as his discovery of the nature of humankind allows him to rekindle his sense of empathy. Conversely, Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) follows the life of the titular protagonist whose discovery of the power of his youth and the inevitability of growing old causes the degradation of his virtue. Although these texts differ greatly in content and context, a parallel…