Prompt Examples for "The Picture of Dorian Gray" Essays
The Nature of Beauty and Corruption
Discuss the central theme of beauty and corruption in "The Picture of Dorian Gray." How does Dorian ...Read More
Prompt Examples for "The Picture of Dorian Gray" Essays
The Nature of Beauty and Corruption
Discuss the central theme of beauty and corruption in "The Picture of Dorian Gray." How does Dorian Gray's obsession with physical appearance lead to moral decay? Analyze the symbolism of the portrait and its role in the story.
Morality and Consequences
Explore the moral dilemmas faced by the characters in the novel. How do their choices and actions reflect the consequences of their moral beliefs or lack thereof? Analyze the role of Lord Henry's hedonistic philosophy in influencing Dorian's decisions.
The Portrait as a Reflection of the Soul
Analyze the concept of the portrait as a reflection of Dorian's inner self. How does the portrait's transformation mirror Dorian's moral corruption? Discuss the symbolism of the portrait's deteriorating appearance.
The Influence of Society and Peer Pressure
Discuss the influence of society and peer pressure on Dorian Gray's character development. How do societal norms and the expectations of his peers contribute to his descent into decadence? Analyze the role of conformity and rebellion.
Oscar Wilde's Critique of Victorian Society
Examine how Oscar Wilde critiques Victorian society in "The Picture of Dorian Gray." How does the novel challenge conventional moral values, social hypocrisy, and the repression of desires? Discuss Wilde's use of wit and satire.
The Theme of Art and Aestheticism
Analyze the theme of art and aestheticism in the novel. How does Dorian's pursuit of aesthetic experiences and his rejection of morality reflect the aesthetic movement of the late 19th century? Discuss the tension between art and ethics.
The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out. Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online Get my essay Thomas...
Murder, sex, scandal, and drug abuse-all of these sins of the main character thread together to shape Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a dark tale of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth while his portrait bears the scars of...
In The Picture of Dorian Gray, written by Oscar Wilde many different themes are shown throughout. But the theme I feel is most important is beauty and appearance. At the beginning of the book we are introduced to Basil, a painter, he paints a portrait...
“Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland”. He gained a degree from Oxford University. “While at Oxford he was captivated by the aesthetic theories of John Ruskin and Walter Pater… Emphasizing aesthetics over social and moral “utility” or usefulness…”. The Picture...
The Picture of Dorian Gray demonstrates a divide between aestheticism and morality that Oscars Wilde depicts by giving each character a very specific persona that either challenges or indulges in the immoral vices of life. This is all while Dorian remains paralyzed between two very...
‘Those who go below the surface do so at their own peril’. If the aesthetic exterior of a person is the ‘surface’, it is assumed that below this surface is sensibility and emotion. Wilde warns against probing too deeply, or at all, the conscience; the...
Throughout history, art has played a major role in portraying the structure of society and the different roles people play in it. In Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, art seems to dictate the life of young Dorian Gray to the point of...
Introduction In Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the concept of influence is clearly reflected in two different characters and in two different forms, and juxtaposes them though the main character and his reaction to the two clashing ideologies projected upon him throughout...
In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde writes of a beautiful young man with an ugly secret. While Dorian Gray will forever retain the innocent looks of his youth, his portrait will degenerate with every wrong he commits. Unburdened and unmarked by his corruption,...
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, is a classic example of a traditional Gothic novel, despite the fact that it isn’t scary. Gothic literature received its name because many examples of the genre were set during the late-medieval, or Gothic, period. It became...
The Victorian Era was a time of stark contrast in Great Britain. Great Britain had suddenly exploded into an industrious powerhouse and engaged in wide spread imperialism. The cities began to become overrun as rampant migration from rural to urban areas occurred. The massive influx...
In the novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, an experienced and insightful man shares a compelling life philosophy with a younger, less refined man. This transmission of ideas opens the interpretation of how art and society influence identity in ways that don’t...
The Picture of Dorian Gray can be considered as one of the most controversial novels of the aesthetic movement. Oscar Wilde was one of the leaders of the aesthetic movement during the 1890s. Wilde’s novel takes us through a lifestyle of someone who lives without...
Introduction «The book gives a person the opportunity to rise above himself» Andre Maurois Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online Get my essay Books are our guides to life. They...
In his novel of 1891, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’, Wilde uses setting and location to explore not only the character and moral conscience of his protagonist but also the divides inherent within Victorian society as he contrasts the wealthy homes of Mayfair with the...
Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is without a doubt a reflection of its author and its time. As an academic, social, and political figurehead of late 19th century London, Wilde was highly engaged in the ongoing public dialogue surrounding the stream of new social...
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) explores the divide in London in the 19th Century. The divide between the ‘the east and west which was being perpetrated through poetry and novels’ reflects the duality in Dorian Gray. Dualism is ‘the condition or state...
The Unconscious Image of the Conscious Mind Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online Get my essay “Psychology helps us to talk about what the novelist knows” (Fish and Perkins), as...
The Scarlet Prayer: Genesis Allegory and Christian Symbolism in The Picture of Dorian Gray Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online Get my essay Dorian Gray and the Bible (NKJV) seem...
Brittany Schenk Made-to-order essay as fast as you need it Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences + experts online Get my essay 4 January 2014 What Is In a Name? French author Marcel Proust once stated “Words do not change their...
Throughout the Gothic novel Dracula, Stoker uses symbology and imagery to reveal social anxieties and fears of the late Victorian era, for example the use of animalistic description and blood. Wilde, in his own Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray uses imagery to explore...
In Chapter 20 of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian is presented to us as a figure torn between reforming and alleviating himself from the sin and corruption he has perpetuated on others, and pursuing his exclamatory yearning for his “unsullied splendour of eternal youth”...
Although created in different eras, Oscar Wilde’s 1980 gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and Damien Chazelle’s 2014 drama film Whiplash are comparable in the exploration of obsession, destruction and control by the text’s creators. Chazelle and Wild analogously explore the concept of obsessions...
“… he felt now that his soul was festering in sin”. Joyce signals Stephen’s transition from innocent bystander to self-proclaimed sinner within A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Dorian has a similar transformation in realising his beauty from Basil’s portrait “he had...
All language exists with two definitions. The primary, literal meaning is defined as what the object physically is, and the secondary, symbolic meaning is what the object represents. An object’s literal meaning remains a stationary constant, as it exists in a physical reality, and can...
Dr. James Knoll, a forensic psychiatrist, says, “The paranoia exists on a spectrum of severity. … Many perpetrators are in the middle, gray zone where psychiatrists will disagree about the relative contributions of moral failure versus mental affliction.” Dr. Knoll mentions that, in murderers, the...
After ten weeks of intently studying a wide range of some of literature’s greatest authors and their representative works, one is hard pressed to single out only four of these transcendiary pieces from such a distinguished list. However, four of these works, and their authors,...
How do your chosen authors explore Victims and Villains? Within the supernatural victims and villains will most likely appear as main plot devices. Throughout The picture of Dorian Gray many fall to his charm and beauty then paying the price with their death for example...
Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a classic exploration of the duality of human nature. In chapter 11, this theme is particularly evident as we see the internal struggle and moral decay of the protagonist, Dorian Gray. This chapter serves as a...
In Oscar Wilde’s novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” the theme of monstrosity is explored through the character of Dorian Gray and the portrait that bears the weight of his sins. Dorian’s transformation from a handsome and innocent young man into a corrupt and immoral...
The story begins in the art studio of Basil Hallward, who is discussing a current painting with his witty and amoral friend Lord Henry Wotton. Dorian Gray, the subject of the painting, arrives, and he is fascinated as Henry explains that beauty and youth are fleeting and that he believes one should live life to the fullest by indulging one’s impulses. Dorian declares that he would give his soul if the portrait were to grow old and wrinkled while he remained young and handsome. Basil gives the painting to Dorian, who spends the next 18 years in pursuit of capricious excess and is increasingly drawn to evil.
Themes
The Picture of Dorian Gray presents the conflict between good and evil sides of humanity, where individuals are highly influenced and weak against the temptations of youth, love, pleasure and secrecy. This emphasizes the uglier side of a life all about the pursuit of pleasure and beauty.
Characters
Dorian Gray, Basil Hallward, Lord Henry "Harry" Wotton, Sibyl Vane, James Vane, Alan Campbell, Lord Fermor, Adrian Singleton, Lord Henry's wife
Popularity
Wilde's only novel, it was subject to much controversy and criticism in its time. Even bowdlerized, The Picture of Dorian Gray offended the moral sensibilities of British book reviewers, to the extent, in some cases, of saying that Wilde merited prosecution for violating the laws guarding public morality. However, the novel became a classic of English literature and was adapted into a number of films, most notably a 1945 version.
Quotes
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
References
1. Baker, H. A. (1969). A tragedy of the artist: the picture of Dorian Gray. Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 24(3), 349-355. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2932864)
2. Oates, J. C. (1980). " The Picture of Dorian Gray": Wilde's Parable of the Fall. Critical Inquiry, 7(2), 419-428. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/448106?journalCode=ci)
3. Carroll, J. (2005). Aestheticism, Homoeroticism, and Christian Guilt in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Philosophy and Literature, 29(2), 286-304. (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/189431)
4. Gillespie, M. P. (1995). The Picture of Dorian Gray:" what the world thinks me". (https://philpapers.org/rec/GILTPO-39)
5. Seagroatt, H. (1998). Hard Science, Soft Psychology, and Amorphous Art in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 38(4), 741-759. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/451096)
6. Davis, M. (2013). Mind and Matter in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Victorian Literature and Culture, 41(3), 547-560. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/abs/mind-and-matter-in-the-picture-of-dorian-gray/A497BA8F7EFA31781860D48A7E322F36)
7. Rashkin, E. (1997). Art as Symptom: A Portrait of Child Abuse in" The Picture of Dorian Gray". Modern Philology, 95(1), 68-80. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/392452?journalCode=mp)
8. Paglia, C. (1990). The Beautiful Boy As Destroyer: Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray. In Sexual Personae (pp. 512-530). Yale University Press. (https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.12987/9780300182132-023/html?lang=de)
9. Simion, M. O. (2015). A new hedonism in Oscar Wilde's novel the picture of Dorian Gray. Annals Constantin Brancusi U. Targu Jiu, Letters & Soc. Sci. Series, 55. (https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/ancnbt2015&div=13&id=&page= )
10. Keefe, R. (1973). Artist and Model in" The Picture of Dorian Gray". Studies in the Novel, 63-70. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/29531571)
