The Picture of Dorian Gray

Being forced to interpret and analyze art, whether it’s literature or an actual painting, in school, I have always thought of it from a different perspective compared to the teachers and students around me. My interpretations, like the others around me, are unique in our own sense. Class discussions of single interpretation on a piece of artwork is absurd. The long lasting masterpiece should not be deemed one perception. Controversies involving a piece of work is drivel. Argueing over a single…

The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde, ca. 1894 “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” - Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan Oscar Wilde liked to write plays that pointed at the aristocracy and nouveau riche in a critical way, but of course, written in a funny way so that his work became satirical. Oscar Wilde was therefore a brilliant writer of comedies of manners, the entertainment form that satirizes the manners of a social class, in Wilde’s case, the high…

social isolation, but other common types include isolation from morals and reality. An example of isolation in a novel is in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. This book follows the life of the protagonist, Dorian Gray, as he explores a new hedonistic lifestyle that changes the way he looks at things as well as the way others look at him. As a result of Dorian Gray’s lifestyle change, his actions puts him in positions of isolation, in which he is morally isolated from the rest of society.…

In chapter 18 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor the main idea is how drowning is symbolic of baptism. In Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Milkman gets wet three times, an allusion to the form of Christian baptism in which the person is submerged three times in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. But it is not always baptism, it can mean something different like in Africa, drowning is associated with the Middle Passage. The Middle Passage is the mysterious, treacherous, and a…

Fun Home is a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel, depicting her fictionalized life as a younger self among her family. Many themes and important passages occurred throughout the text such as, the concept of double identity and how both Alison and Bruce Bechdel, her father, handled their sexuality and expressed it. “I had recently discovered some of Dad 's old clothes. Putting on a formal shirt with its studs and cufflinks was a nearly mystical pleasure, like finding myself fluent in a language I 'd…

Sigmund Freud said, “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.” Self expression has always been an important part of one's identity and personality. This is a recurring theme in The Picture of Dorian Grey and The Secret Life of Bees in their actions and mental state. When one is unable to express oneself, it heavily affects their mental health and generally causes stress for the person. A well known and relatively simple way to…

Normally, a man who writes about sin and the failures of mankind wouldn’t be considered a very optimistic person. Nathaniel Hawthorne, however, is a special case. It would be easy to assume, of course, that he had no faith in humanity, but a deeper look into both his life and his writing reveals the opposite. He said it himself in his American Note-Books, “What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew how to seek for it.” Hawthorne’s personal life was full of tragic…

proportion because one person might not be able to manage the maturity it takes to read the book, but it does not mean it should be banned for everyone else to be allowed to read it. The same idea is also represented by Oscar Wilde, author of The Picture of Dorian Gray, when he articulates that, “The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.” This shows that when the world censors a book, it goes to show that they are to be put to shame for taking away…

go: gratifying young adult romance novels or something thought-provoking that would impact them, and perhaps, change them for the better? Then, I would realize that I can choose both. With that, I would recommend Oscar Wilde’s The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. While all of these novels have impacted me, there is definitely one that I will never forget: Slaughterhouse-Five. While at first…

In “Child of the Far Frontier,” Wallace Stegner writes in the first person about his childhood and his upbringing, with details that reveal how one’s past experiences—especially during their childhood—profoundly impact their overall identity in ways that cannot always be reversed; this is verifiably true both in Stegner’s case and those of others, nearly an axiom of the human condition. One example is how people sometimes follow in the footsteps of their parents and other family members in terms…