The Picture Of Dorian Gray Moral Analysis

Cruelty plays a vital role in developing the plot and characters in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Throughout the piece, many acts of cruelty are displayed from Dorian Gray and others that show truly who they are how they've developed from it. Dorian takes on a huge change in his morals and standards because of the influence taken in from others. This influence causes him to only care about his own youth and vanity, resulting in a huge change of personality. The more Dorian becomes influenced by Lord Henry and the painting, the crueler he becomes

Although « The Picture of Dorian Gray » was published more than one hundred years ago, Dorian Gray is more real than he has ever been nowadays. It is a novel written by Oscar Wilde, one of the greatest authors in the English literature. It reflects themes that have been human preoccupations: the expresses of desire for eternal beauty and youth, which is a representation of our today’s society and its fixation on appearance. The pursuit of staying young forever has always existed and will continue to grow along with our developing society.

History, as it progresses, evolves and adapts to new knowledge. This novel takes place about a century after America became a country. The knowledge of North America led the European countries to invade and repopulate with their offspring, while driving the natives out. That led to the creation of new countries. Until then, many believed that there was only Europe and Asia on a map alongside some islands. The truth one knows is not always certain. Many characters are religious in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Religions around the world rely on what is scripted to be true. Even though many overlap or cancel each other out, billions around the world continue to believe in what is certain for them. Romance is also another thing believed to be certain. The relationships focused on in the novel are very unstable and based on almost no connection other than money. Although there are many different views about different romances. One type of romance that has long been under fire are LGBTQ romances. While many live happily being who they are, others face the scrutiny of others throwing what they believe to be true onto them. That is the case with Oscar Wilde himself. He lived in a time where his truth was not accepted by

The Picture of Dorian Gray, one of Oscar Wilde’s masterpieces, portrays one of the most important values and principles for him: aestheticism. As a criticism to the life lived during the Victorian era in England, Wilde exposed a world of beauty a freedom in contradiction to the lack of tolerance a limitation of that era; of course inspired due to Wilde’s personal life. All the restrictions of the Victorian England lead him to a sort of anarchism against what he found to be incoherent rules, and he expressed all this to his art. His literature is a strong, political and social criticism. He gave a different point of view to controversial topics such as life, morality, values, art, sexuality, marriage, and many others, and epigrams, for what he is very well known, where the main source to the exposure of his interpretations of this topic.

Another theme illustrated through Wilde’s use of motifs and symbols is the theme of superficiality. The theme of superficiality can be understood as a sense of the superficial view of outer beauty that is shown in the work. It relates to the concept of remaining young, which is an important factor of what is shown in the novel. This is an important part of the novel because outer beauty plays a bigger role for Dorian, than inner beauty does. In the beginning of the novel, Lord Henry and Dorian have a conversation that focuses on the topic of youth and Dorian 's outer beauty – Lord Henry mentions the fact that Dorian has a beautiful face, and later during this conversation, Lord Henry states that: “youth is the only thing worth having…” (Wilde 23). This conversation leads Dorian to wish that he will only age in the painting, and not in reality. Wilde creates a theme of superficiality as he shows through motifs and symbols how Dorian’s sinful and horrific inner beauty becomes excused as the characters of the novel primarily superficially values Dorian’s outer beauty.

The Picture of Dorian gray is a book written by Oscar Wilde and it was published in 1880. The book was later revised by addition of more chapters and reprinted in April 1891. Dorian Gray is the main character in this book that is described as a beautiful and unspoiled male who changes his life completely by sinning and pleasure after meeting Lord Henry. Basil Hallward who is a painter develops obsession for Dorian because of his beauty whereas Lord Henry Wotton Basil’s friend influences Dorian with his theories about life, pleasure and women even though he had no intention of changing Dorian’s personality. Lord Henry’s influence in Dorian leads to his downfall. The author’s main themes are identity, influence, and experience.

Oscar Wilde’s Victorian melodramatic play The Importance of Being Earnest opened on February 14, 1895. Wilde used this play to criticize Victorian society through clever phrasing and satire. Throughout the play The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde displayed the themes of the nature of marriage, the constraints of morality, and the importance of not being earnest.

Lord Henry was a terrible influence on Dorian by his words and the yellow book. It was given to Dorian by Lord Henry as a gift, “For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book” (Wilde 92). Lord Henry’s influence on Dorian is horrifying, just as the yellow book poisoned Dorian’s mind and gave him dangerous ideas, Lord Henry has done the same to him. In a way, the yellow book itself represents Lord Henry, with all of its cynicism and pessimistic view on life, it twists Dorian’s once innocent mind into one that is filled with monstrous ideas. The yellow book poisoned him, causing him to be obsessed with it “and [he] had them bound in different colors, so that they might suit his various moods and the fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control” (Wilde 93). Dorian Gray had no control over the influence of the yellow book or the effect that Lord Henry held over

The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray shocked the moral judgments of British book critics. Some of them said Oscar Wilde deserved to be pursuance for breaking the laws guarding the common morality because the uses of homosexuality were in that time banned. This book was for that time unusual because it had a pretty serious criticism on the society from that time. The novel is about a young and extraordinarily beautiful youngster, named Dorian Gray that have promised to his soul in order to live a life of eternal youth, he must try to adapt himself to the bodily decay and dissipation that are shown in his portrait. The genre of the novel is a terror, drama, psychology, humanitarianisms, romance and paranormal components.

The portrait, the main symbol of the novel, carries all the marks of Gray 's degeneration, who is exploring all possible vices and desires, without to notice his moral decay. And all these marks show on the canvas, become a sort of conscience for Dorian.

The act of human nature that people should want to bring out in this novel is our need for attention, our vanity. It may not sound so complicated or serious enough to bring up, but this is key in the way men naturally act. Dorian Gray is obsessed with what people think of him. To always have the limelight,being recognized by his peers. We always have to be flattered by someone else to feel valuable. People are always judging someone based on their appearance every day. Why does mankind do this? It is because it is man’s natural train of thought. It seems to be almost impossible to ignore this urge to be seen and to be approved by others. Dorian wanted to remain forever young, not necessarily to live forever, but to stay beautiful. That way others can not judge him based on his outward appearance. He cared so much for drama and plays because I am sure he loved the attention that the characters received. When he walks into the room he wants everyone to think of him as this young, dashingly handsome man. He wants this power forever. Yet he only wants to get positive attention. When he was challenged by others on his way of life he loses control and does things that make him the gossiped person in town. Gives everyone a sense of awe. Gives them something to talk about. Our need for attention rules us all. We do things that we should not

The reader gets the impression that the portrait is a representation of Dorian 's inner self, and how it becomes uglier and more disgraceful as time gradually passes and with every horrific crime that he commits, as can be seen in the following quote: “The picture had to be concealed. There was no help for it.” (Wilde 113). The portrait serves as an image of Dorian 's true nature and the relationship between how his soul progressively becomes more nefarious, and how the evil of his soul becomes visible on the painted surface of the canvas. The way Wilde uses the portrait as a motif throughout the story helps the reader to see and understand how Dorian himself is not yet entirely unfettered by the influence of the portrait. As the portrait significantly becomes more hideous, Dorian gradually loses his mind. The reader understands that what eventually leads Dorian to kill Basil Hallward, the only true friend he has, is the constant reminder of the evil found at the heart of Dorian’s nature, as represented by the portrait. In Dorian doing so, the reader realises that not only does Dorian kill Basil, he also kills his only chance of redemption of his soul. The reader realises that the statement that Dorian had expressed earlier in the story was the truth: “Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now.” (Wilde 109-110).

“Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” (1 Corinthians 15:33). The protagonist in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde suffers from bad company. The sway of people and objects causes impressionable Dorian to descend into corruption. Little by little, he makes choices influenced by the thoughts put in his head. At the end of the book, he has lost all of his innocence and gained cruelty. Bad company and objects are what causes Dorian Gray 's corruption.

‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ is the title of this book which wrote by a great author named Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde had writing many books based on his experiences and most of his genre is quite dark and mysterious, same as this book he wrote which contain gothic genre. I found this story had gothic genre because the storyteller, which is Oscar Wilde illustrating supernatural event in this story such as the Dorian’s wish seem like coming true as the portrait was the one that kept aging instead of Dorian Gray himself. Thus, the portrait has reflected as Dorian Gray’s soul and his personality grew darker and more evil as his life continued. This book that I read has quite artfully as it is like engaging me to keep reading more to know the

Throughout Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, we view the horrible actions of the main character, Dorian Gray. These actions, however, never seem to affect Dorian. We soon come to realize that this self-portrait reflects Dorian’s actions and aging process instead of Dorian and allow him to live a secret life of horrible acts. In the novel, Dorian takes full advantage of the portraits power, calling the portrait a reflection of his soul, and makes no effort to preserve his soul due to the poisonous influence from Lord Henry and his own selfishness.