The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray follows the life of a young man, Dorian Gray, in the Victorian Society. The main character is Dorian Gray, a young man who attempts to be young forever. At the beginning of the book, Dorian has many interactions with Lord Henry, a sarcastic, influential, and intelligent man. Lord Henry uses many epigrams, witty sayings that reveal deep truths about Victorian society. Wilde uses blunt epigrams to reveal the hidden truths of high society during the…

Oscar Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1890 during an era in British history when immoral actions and values were to be hidden. When the book was first published the issue of the main characters' -Dorian and Basil- sexualities, became a very pressing issue for the book not to be printed for the masses. The British culture, centered wholly on facade, wished to keep its reputation as being the most pure civilization and display its highest morals, even though there were the underlying…

light. It is a very common practice, in fictional literature, for authors to use static characters in order to expose change in the protagonist. For example, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde uses the characters of Lord Henry Wotton and Basil Hallward to measure Dorian’s descent into Henry’s hedonistic ways. When we meet Dorian he is pure and innocent. Throughout the book he reacts differently to Henry’s statements and actions. Another use of a static character is apparent in Hamlet,…

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. After their first encounter, Lord Henry’s hedonistic values corrupt Dorian by causing him to worship youth and beauty, as seen through Dorian’s reaction to their first conversation,…

Black, White, and Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a well-known story about a innocent young man’s fall into corruption. In the beginning of the book, the main character, Dorian, is depicted as a very attractive, innocent, young man; ‘“…the willful sunbeams of life…”’(Wilde 56). A painter, engrossed to Dorian’s beauty, paints a portrait of Dorian, capturing his essence on canvas. However, after listening to his friend, Lord Henry, about the horrors of growing old, he wishes his sins and old…

of that struggle. Doubles give the reader an inside perspective into the minds’ of William Wilson and Dorian Gray. William Wilson’s struggles with vice and challenge to his authority are exposed by his double, and Dorian Gray’s challenges with vanity and self-indulgence are exposed by his. Through this motif, the reader is shown how the characters’ of “William Wilson” and The Picture of Dorian Gray attempt to understand and resolve the conflict between one’s internal ideal and less ideal…

they did not perceive women as actually possessing their own voice. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde is a misogynistic novella that is made evident by the perils and later suicide of Sybil Vane due to Dorian’s impacts, the tragic love life of Margaret Devereux due to her father’s influence…

In the novel of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and The Picture of Dorian Gray, both main characters landed up in a place of desolation and unhappiness through their heavy pursuit of what they thought would give them happiness. Both characters started off young with a large potential for happiness by following their own individual pursuits, but instead the route that they took ultimately lead them down a slippery slope of tragedy and melancholy. They followed a way of denial from the factors that would…

In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde it is apparent that Lord Henry’s influence drastically changes Dorian’s view of himself and the world around him. Dorian’s character began as a blank slate, but deep within Dorian’s character there was the temptation for the forbidden. Lord Henry saw this as an opportunity to introduce his philosophy and indulge his desire to manipulate him for his own pleasure. Lord Henry’s philosophy of Aestheticism is not inherently bad, it simply allows an…

that we were ever young; / It is to add, immured/ In the hot prison of the present, month/ To month with weary pain” (Arnold 21-25). Similar to Dorian Gray, the speaker would do anything to stay young and beautiful, aware of the better life one can live in society. During the late Victorian Era, there was an immense pressure put upon people to maintain their beauty. Aestheticism was an ongoing movement where individuals only had a value in society if they had a youthful appearance. Pressure to…