This literary parallel also underlined in the final description of the portrait of what Dorian Gray has become at the end of the book, Chapter 20: "The thing was still loathsome -- more loathsome, if possible, than before -- and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilled. Then he trembled. Had it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed? Or the desire for a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh?" Again, there is scarlet, but this is the scarlet of blood letting, not an innocent blush of the young Dorian's lips. Once again, at the words of Lord Henry, even the older and more jaded Dorian is moved to tremble. He blanches at the sight of the picture, but for a different reason, because he can see the monster he has become, rather than fears the passage of age as he did as a young man. His own portrait is described as loathsome, like a serpent, and the diction of the passage is Biblical and elevated, "the scarlet of blood," "desire," and "scarlet dew" as a euphemism for blood. Once again, the narrator has taken over from the dialogue-heavy pages that have preceded it, to inform the reader with authority about the portentous nature of Dorian's...
Henry planted knowledge in Dorian's brain, that all beauty must die, but this knowledge did not enlighten, rather it became a terrible burden for Dorian Gray and caused Gray to want to defy nature. Because of Henry's knowledge, Dorian becomes sinful in his knowledge and his awareness of his own beauty. Dorian takes advantage of his beauty, gained by seeing himself through Lord Henry's eyes and the eyes of an admiring artist, and uses his ageless beauty as a weapon against the world, until the instrument of this knowledge turns against the artist that created this awareness in the form of Basil. Then, finally the subject turns this awareness against himself, the object of Basil's talent.
He has tried to live a life of pure pleasure with no concern for others, but he cannot escape his own fear, because he knows all the wrongs he has done. The ultimate sin was killing the only person who ever saw true beauty in him. For its time, this book was extremely well done, and the writing cannot be faulted in the light of Victorian English literature. The story,
Is this 'good' or natural one might ask, if Basil is one of the moral characters of the book and defying nature and wishing for eternal youth is immoral? Henry's counsel to Dorian that Dorian yield to his every natural temptation and not bow down to societal morality could be seen as an endorsement of the natural, but Henry also celebrates youth to an unnatural, unchanging degree and he
Although Dorian has clearly been touched (figuratively) by Lord Henry, he immediately "falls in love" with the young actress he sees during a stage performance of a Shakespeare play. It seems to the reader that Wilde intentionally makes Dorian's feelings for Sibyl unrealistic and not true to Dorian's character by having Dorian come from nowhere with news that he is engaged to Sibyl, and then a few days later
Indeed, Dorian Gray does end up doing much wrong to Miss Vane which induces her to commit suicide. However, her brother, a worldly seaman, does not get the opportunity to fulfill his promise, for he too ends up dead through the machinations of the evil Dorian Gray. Dorian's third mistake occurs at the conclusion of the story when he decides to destroy the painting which after many years has become
picture of Dorian and the rise of Aestheticism Oscar Wilde, despite having lived and died in the first half of the twentieth century, that is, in the year 1900, when he was just about 46 years old, remains, to this day in the twenty first century, a man whose intellectual witticisms and aestheticisms are well appreciated and even stay unparalleled today. In fact, it is often said that Oscar Wilde's
The narrator prefaces the anecdote regarding Liza as one of the few instances in which he ventured to leave the underground which emphasizes the magnitude of his encounter with her. Moreover, his encounter with her is so dramatic and draining, that they abruptly end his notes from the underground. The following quotation proves this fact. Of his encounter with Liza the narrator recalls "Even now, so many years later,
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