The First School Edition, NIS.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Astana, Kazakhstan, NIS.

Description (Abstract)1

The Second School Edition presents a book, where the Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of the Dorian Gray” themes, characters,

literal and rhetorical devices are revealed. Read and Inquire an original version of the book and then identify the interesting

analysis of that here.

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For those who needs to develop analytical and inquiry skills through reading.

π ∆∆⩥

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Content

Summary & Setting…………………………………………….. 5-7

Characters. Character profiles…………………………………7

Themes………………………………………………………………9-10

Conclusions……………………………………………………………11

Summary

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Strand1: Setting.

Throughout the story actions are happening in London, 1890. London is shown in contrast, as there the actions happening in East and West Ends.

The setting accompanies to the revelation of levels of morality, personality and intentions of each character.

There are four main settings in the book. Thus the first one, which is the centerpiece of the story is Basil’s Art Gallery. It is the mysterious and closed place, where Basil could only gather his minds, to create art pieces and to get a feeling of tranquility. It is the place, where simultaneously he was dramatically killed by Dorian Gray. I call it a place of “rebirth” and a place of “death”.

The second significant setting is the Basil’s Garden. This is the most outstanding and fascinating place in the world. There are a lot of blossoming flowers. There is especially a lilac bush, to smell

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of which Dorian was charmed. That setting could be called as a tool of the rising action in the plot. This is because here, Lord Henry had paid a great influence on Dorian at first time. It is a seed of Dorian’s demise. The Garden’s temporary blossoming and beauty creates the gloomy thoughts in Dorian. Now, he becomes too much obsessed on a theme of aging and he understands that in 20 years he would turn into a wrinkled, skinny and powerless old man. So, garden is the symbol of beauty, which would inevitably fade, but recover in a spring. However a human, could never come back to his initial and beautiful look.

The third setting is the Play House. Here Dorian fells in love with Sybil Vane at first time. Here is also his first sin appears, when he divorced with Sybil. “These common, rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures,”

Here, he becomes as an unwise person. He commits that the sin he’s done, has changed his portrait.

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Opium Den – temporary liberation.

Here, Dorian Gray is completely sinful. He use this place in order to forget all the errors and sins he has made. He has killed the Basil Holloward and hired the doctor to dispose Basil’s bloody remains. Here, eventually, Lord Henry’s words come to his mind: “Cure the soul by the means of the senses, and the senses by the means of the soul”. Dorian thinks that if the murder and other sins are unforgivable and Basil is now dead, he can simply forget them with help of drugs and forgive himself. That setting helps to reveal how weak, effeminate and arrogant he was. I say that he is the cruelest and heartless creature in a world.

Character profilesMAIN Characters:

Dorian Gray – the main figure of the story. Is grown up without parents. Mother and father are dead. Mother: Margaret Deverucks. Dorian inherited a property from his grandfather: Kelso.

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Basil Hallward: The great painter of the 19’s century. He has drawn a portrait of Dorian, and had abnormal feelings towards Dorian. He loved Dorian, for his freshness, beauty and pure soul in the beginning.

Lord Henry – the most caustic and waspish character of the story. He is a manipulator of story and its characters.

Sybil Vane – a girl from the East end of London. Cheerful, kind she embodies only positive traits, not typical for the East London women. She is contrast to Dorian.

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ThemesThe purpose of Art – Aesthetics

he purpose of art, according to this series of epigrams, is to have no purpose. In order to understand this claim fully, one needs to consider the moral climate of Wilde’s time and the Victorian sensibility regarding art and morality. The Victorians believed that art could be used as a tool for social education and moral enlightenment, as illustrated in works by writers such as Charles Dickens and George Gissing. The aestheticism movement, of which Wilde was a major proponent, sought to free art from this responsibility. The aestheticists were motivated as much by a contempt for bourgeois morality—a sensibility embodied in Dorian Gray by Lord Henry, whose every word seems designed to shock the ethical certainties of the burgeoning middle class—as they were by the belief that art need not possess any other purpose than being beautiful. (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/themes.html)

The superficial nature of society

As Lady Narborough notes to Dorian, there is little distinction between ethics and appearance: “you are made to be good—you look so good.” The society every time prizes the beauty the most, above the morality and sanity. Society fell in love with looks. Society makes connections and engagements basing on the beauty of the surface rather than on the souls’ beauty. Despite of Dorian’s “mode of life,” he remains at the heart of the London social scene because of the “innocence” and “purity of his face.”

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The distracting power of influence.

Basil’s idolatry of Dorian leads to his murder, and Dorian’s devotion to Lord Henry’s hedonism and the yellow book precipitate his own downfall. It is little wonder, in a novel that prizes individualism—the uncompromised expression of self—that the sacrifice of one’s self, whether it be to another person or to a work of art, leads to one’s destruction. (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doriangray/themes.html)

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Conclusion

Be sane

Self-assured

Individual

Do not get influenced by somebody, do not allow somebody to put his soul into you!

Do not concentrate on the external look only, see and value the things inside. Appreciate soul beauty and purity!

Good look is nothing, if person is a beast inside!

Remember that, and never reflect this story character’s mistakes!

Good Luck!

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