Five things I enjoyed about Picture of Dorian Gray
1. Literary freedom of interpretation. I found that this was one of the most important things to making the book work. Picture of Dorian Gray required the reader to understand Dorian Gray as the most attractive man that ever lived. His striking features, and his overall handsomeness make him the muse of beauty and he has the look of innocence and kindness imbedded in him. This is only to be later corrupted. The book would not have worked the same way if I was not able to imagine who I thought the most handsome man would be.
I read this book with my sister and this seemed to be one of the fundamental concepts that we both agreed upon. Not that we both discussed how important and necessary our interpretation was to the book, but rather it came out when we began to discuss what the movie would be like (as we both have yet to see the movies). We both started talking about what Dorian looked like. We both only kept the most vague description that the book left us (the innocent face, the dark hair) and from there we had built two very different Dorians… and her’s was not nearly as handsome as mine.
2. The end. The destruction of the picture was the only way the book could end. The book is set up to describe Dorian’s innocence and how he is corrupted. The dreaded chapter 11 could be looked at as equivalent to a movie montage. It clips together pieces of Dorian’s life over the span of decades to we get to know the kind of person that Dorian has become. We are left with the image of Dorian looking exactly the same as he did 20 years before, except his soul has withered away and can be perceived in the picture.
Once we move through the montage the book goes through a series of almost-endings, none of which follow through with the ultimate demise of Dorian. But when he is staring at his picture in the abandoned room the only way that he could end the story is with the destruction of the painting. The ending is a phenomenal estimate to the power of words, because as she slashes the painting, he dies with stab marks in his old body. He takes on the likeness of the picture and becomes a weathered old man. That can only happen with the words of the book. Almost impossible to describe the details of the event or what “actually” happened. Films would be left to interpret their own ending and hope that the audience follows with the same concept.—I have yet to see any one the movies. Maybe they do better than I can predict.—
3. Lord Henry. He has the uncanny ability to always say the wrong thing and make it sound like the most brilliant idea ever. This would happen to both my sister and I. We would read through each of Lord Henry’s arguments and eat it up. By into each one until the end. Then after setting down the book for one second and mulling over why the argument didn’t sit so well with us we were able to determine that was because the argument didn’t make any sense. We reached some interesting incite after reading some of his stuff though.
4. The Dialogue. I do not read many classics and part (probably most of the reason) is because of the daunting descriptions that take pages and pages to get through, and it takes chapters before the plot moves forward at all. I guess Wilde’s playwright prose naturally came out when writing The Picture of Dorian Gray. He wrote with little description, just enough necessary, and was able to push the book forward because it was heavily driven by the dialogue. Only the dreaded chapter 11 lacked any sort of speaking portion.
5. The philosophical incites. Oscar Wilde works in a lot of philosophy in this little book. Things to mull over, food for thought, and the general outline of the whole book. This was defiantly a book that I had to read, stop, then think to truly understand it; even though it was simple enough (vocabulary and writing style wise) that I could have got through it in one go. Moments, as shallow as some may be, that made me think:
I. “I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.”
II. “Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”
III. “Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not.”
IV. “[R]realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of you days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, the vulgar. These are the dimly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. … A new Hedonism.”
V. “People are very fold of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”
VI. “There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”
VII. “When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.”
VIII. “When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”
IX. “To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.”
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