Painting of Dorian Gray

In this novel, Oscar Wilde takes an interesting spin on imagination through a simple painting. I found it extremely interesting because a few years ago I came up with my own story dealing with a painting and how it was enchanted and actually told a story and predicted the future through the painting itself. Of course it does not compare to this story in terms of quality and structure and so on. I simply found it somewhat coincidental and amusing to myself!

Wilde uses the painting in this story to represent the character of Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray wishes that he could forever stay beautiful. He wishes this so much that he offers to sell his soul and let the portrait that Basil has painted of him to age instead of himself. Dorian gets his wish and keeps this painting hidden away and watches it change and distort within time while he remains young and beautiful. This represents how in the culture of this time period, beauty and appearance were extremely valued and important, much like today. People will go to extremes to make sure that they continue to remain as youthful and beautiful as possible. Lord Henry Wotton influenced Dorian greatly in his beliefs that pleasure and beauty are all that really matters in life. With this mindset, a person’s soul can become quite distorted. This is in fact what happened to the painting of Dorian which represented his soul.

The distortion of this portrait of Dorian Gray is a representation of how with every sin, your soul becomes more and more distorted. Dorian Gray hid his painting because he didn’t want anyone else to see how he had become so distorted. You would think that if you are aware of how awful you

I found it interesting that in the end of the story, when Dorian dies, the painting goes back to its original form and Dorian himself is transformed into the hideous depiction of him that the picture represented. This is a clever way to show that even if you do to try to avoid the consequences of your actions it will eventually catch up with you in the end.

This story is very clever and has great metaphors to get its point across. I thought it was a great portrayal of the culture of the time in which is was written and displays themes that are still seen even today. There are moral values in which one can take away from this book even though it was written so long ago. I think its great how relevant is still remains to this day.