2) Compose a blog response using direct quotations from the text and the philosophies of Oscar Wilde. Think about the conversations from class regarding life imitating art, the nature of evil, etc.
I look forward to your responses...
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Due Monday, April 2nd - "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde - Chapters XIV - XIX
1) Read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - Chapters XIV - XVIII (pages 118-154). We will read the last two chapters together.
2) Compose a blog response using direct quotations from the text and the philosophies of Oscar Wilde. Think about the conversations from class regarding life imitating art, the nature of evil, etc.
I look forward to your responses...
2) Compose a blog response using direct quotations from the text and the philosophies of Oscar Wilde. Think about the conversations from class regarding life imitating art, the nature of evil, etc.
I look forward to your responses...
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“You poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to anyone. It does harm. My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that.... As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” This discussion between Dorian and Lord Henry. Dorian confronts Lord Henry that he believes is responsible for leading him astray. Dorian criticizes the yellow book that year before there was a big influence on him, claiming that this book did him great harm. This accusation is alien to Wilde’s philosophy of aestheticism which holds that are cannot be either moral or immoral. Lord Henry refuses to believe that a book could have so much power.
ReplyDeleteIn these chapters, Dorian’s conscience revolts against him. His immoral lifestyle catches up to him, not in physical appearance, but in his mental stability. The encounter with James Vane puts him over the edge. His paranoid mindset forces him to recount his sins, and he reveals his guilt. “And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air seemed to him to have become suddenly colder. Oh! in what a wild hour of madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory of the scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came back to him with added horror. Out of the black cave of time, terrible and swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at six o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart will break.” His lavish lifestyle, which was supposed to make spiritually satisfied, made him guilt-ridden and depressed. Living out Lord Henry’s philosophy leads to a sad and lonely life.
ReplyDelete" Youth! There is nothing like it. It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks, believed in everything, and knew absolutely nothing." In these chapters Dorian keeps insisting he has changed but Henry says he hasn't. I think this quote shows Wilds opinion that things change quickly and you must keep up with the changes. The augment weather of not he has changed shows that Henry thinks of it in a beauty/looks way and Dorian thinks of it in a moral way. in the beginning of the book we talked about how Henry had the same ideas as wild.
ReplyDeleteThese last few chapters reminded me of the later parts of McBeth; with Dorian’s conscience finally catching up to him, and in how he commits further sins to hide the previous ones- Killing Basil to hide the portrait, blackmailing a former friend to dissolve the corpse, all while still acting as though each action is justified. “I am sorry for you Alan… but you leave me no alternative. I have a letter written already… if you don’t help me, I must send it. If you don’t help me, I will send it. … I tried to spare you. You will do me the justice to admit that.” Dorian tries to pretend that he’s doing a mercy by even offering the chance to not have the blackmail sent out. Another thing that has been mentioned earlier but I think bears repeating is how the philosophies Lord Henry creates for fun are actually taken seriously by Dorian, with Henry’s words, “To cure the soul by means of the senses, and senses by means of the soul” are parroted back later by Dorian. A small snippet of the chapter that stands out to me is the statement “Ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one reality.” This seems like a complement to the statement from The Decay Of Lying that the purpose of art is telling beautiful lies. Dorian does seem to invert much of Oscar’s philosophy in his fall, the portrait, the art, literally imitating his life, enjoying the ugly truth over a beautiful lie, seeing influence as something that reveals his true self as opposed to a corruption.
ReplyDeleteOnce again Wilde is using Dorian's views to express his own ideas on art. Now, as we see Dorian spiral down into paranoia and chaos, we also see him turn away from art and its deceptive properties. Wilde writes, "Ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became dear to him now for that very reason. Ugliness was the one reality. The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art, the dreamy shadows of song. They were what he needed for forgetfulness." Turning to reality, to gritty, vile ugliness, goes directly against Wilde's philosophies on art. According to Wilde, art is beautiful because it is a lie, and he thought embracing this false reality was important. Dorian is rejecting the deceptive art for reality, which he hopes will help him forget Basil's murder, and we as readers can see that he is heading down a very dark path. Wilde is certainly trying to convince us that horrible reality is clearly worse for him and for us than fantasy.
ReplyDeleteIn these chapters, I am starting to see Dorian Gray's sanity to down the drain. It starts off with him killing Basil, blackmails a friend to dissolve the corpse in nitric acid according to the line "I am so sorry for you, Alan," he murmured, "but you leave me no alternative. I have a letter written already. Here it is. You see the address. If you don't help me, I must send it. If you don't help me, I will send it. You know what the result will be. But you are going to help me. It is impossible for you to refuse now. I tried to spare you. You will do me the justice to admit that. You were stern, harsh, offensive. You treated me as no man has ever dared to treat me—no living man, at any rate. I bore it all. Now it is for me to dictate terms." After that, he loses it after encountering James Vane, who attempts to avenge his sister and ends up dying at the end, not by Dorian's hands, but someone else. Dorian is relieved only for a short time before giving into the guilt of everything that he has done. And to think that this all started because of Lord Henry's philosophy, leading Dorian into a terrible life.
ReplyDeleteThere is no going back for Dorian Gray now. His paranoia and terror has seized him. On page 122, the day after he murdered Basil, his “imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain.” Dorian is being haunted by this deed, and now is trying to look for other outlets for pleasure that will take his mind off it. Instead of beauty, Dorian now praises ugliness, for it “was the one reality… more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of Art, the dreamy shadows of Song. They were what he needed for forgetfulness” (136). Yet for once this opinion disagrees with Lord Henry’s position, for just a few pages later Harry says that, “I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly” (143). This shows that Dorian has broken off from Lord Henry’s thinking just a tad, as his downhill spiral continues and he becomes even worse.
ReplyDeleteAfter having killed Basil, Dorian Gray has become extremely paranoid because of all the things he has done that have made his soul so ugly. "The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into their cave." Wilde writes about some type of creature that is waiting for Dorian, and that something bad was going to happen to him, as a result of his evil actions. Also, when met at the end of a gun by James Vane, Dorian Gray denies that he was involved with Sibyl Vane's death in any way. Dorian Gray grew sick with fear. "I never knew her," he stammered. "I never heard of her. You are mad." Dorian Gray got away from James because of how young and beautiful Dorian is on the outside. Dorian Gray has pretty much lost it all at this point and his values and ideals of beauty have changed a lot.
ReplyDeleteIn this and previous section I've really started to see Wilde working in the tenet, lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art. I think that Dorian could be considered art himself. We've know he's beautiful to a point of fascination for many around him, however it wasn't until chapter 15 that I really started to recognize the connection between Dorian's looks, lies and the idea of art. The evening after Basil's body had been, for lack of a better phrase, taken care of, Dorian goes to a dinner at the home of Lady Narborough. When Dorian enters, Wilde writes about the ladies views of him saying, "Those finely shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness." This clearly shows the lie. Dorian did use his handsome features towards sin. However, his sheer beauty masks this entirely. Dorian's beauty is the untrue nature that is seen by those around him and it serves to hide his ugly soul. And if we stick to Wilde's tenet, this is how it should be. So because the proper aim of art, Dorian's beauty, is to tell "beautiful untrue things,"Dorian's beauty should, in fact, serve to lie about the non-beautiful truth. And taking that a step further. The portrait, that is causing the lie that is Dorian's beauty, is somehow still art because, although it isn't beautiful, it results in Dorian's appearance which, as previously discussed, is a lie that results in beauty. For a novel with a fairly simple plot, Wilde has made his novel impressively packed with ideas, tenets and beliefs that make its meaning much more difficult to discern.
ReplyDeleteEllie
In these few chapters, the reader sees both Wilde's satire towards sexism and other themes, as well as his message that beauty can be dangerous. Again, Wilde makes his voice clear in the character of Lord Henry. Though this character is crucial to the plot and the development of Dorian Gray, Wilde also adds a beauty to him in his humor. In a considerable amount of the dialogue, Lord Henry makes statements that would be otherwise controversial if they weren't said sarcastically. For example, Wilde ridicules the idea of women being weak, beautiful creatures in Chapter 15. Here, Lord Henry remarks "She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness". Of course, this is said mockingly, showing how Wilde cleverly criticizes the ideas of the time in his writing. It could also be said that the entire novel mocks the notions of that time. This can also be seen in Chapter 15, just as Dorian arrives at the Narborough's dinner. Wilde illustrates the blind judgement that people made then (and now), determining one's goodness in their beauty. This is shown when, as Ellie had mentioned, the women in the room observed, "Those finely shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness". Evidently, this quote demonstrates how Wilde used irony and sarcasm to disprove common beliefs. Obviously, Dorian Gray *was* sinful and filled with evil. However, peoples' obsession with his beauty distracted them from seeing who he truly was. In a way, his looks acted as his mask, hiding each sin and immoral action.
ReplyDelete-Jill Schuck
In chapters 13-18, it seems like Dorian is having an extreme amount of anxiety about coming to terms with the person he has become / is becoming. Dorian is also straying further from reality and from who he was prior to meeting Lord Henry. He fanatically thinks about Basil’s murder is his dreams. Dorian is hyper paranoid that someone will find the body and meticulously plans out how to erase the evidence. He blackmails Alan Campbell into dissolving Basil’s body. Later, he is a witness to a hunting accident that leaves James Vane dead. When he discovers the identity of the body, he is relieved as believed James was going to kill him. At this point in time, I believe Dorian is will continue to go further from who he was, and even take pleasure in it. In chapter 15, he says "I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure."
ReplyDelete-Matthew Hebert
Dorian starts to become guilty over his choices “He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away. From time to time he seemed to see the eyes of Basil Hallward looking at him. Yet he felt he could not stay. The presence of Adrian Singleton troubled him. He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.” in chapter 16. Even though Dorian has turned completely evil his past choices like killing Basil are starting to catch up to him. He starts to loathe himself because he remembers what Basil’s eyes look like and he just wants to be somewhere where nobody could know what he did. He feels intense shame over his killing. The nature of evil is not bound to strictly chaotic or strictly lawful, it just means immoral or malevolent in nature. Dorian isn’t particularly chaotic or lawful, however he is very immoral and malevolent because he did all of the horrible things that he did to others in the book so far.
ReplyDeleteI found these past chapters very different and interesting, contrasting with the rest of the book. With Dorian’s descent into guilt and paranoia, we are seeing not only the corrosion of himself, but of the book itself. We see Dorian, as he “looked round at the grotesque things that lay in such fantastic postures on the ragged mattresses. The twisted limbs, the gaping mouths, the staring lustreless eyes, fascinated him...Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away.”(pg 177) All throughout Chapter 16, Wilde brings us into a Mr. Hyde-esque journey toward the other side of Dorian Grey. He describes the scenes not as beautiful and wondrous, but as terrible and phantasmic. Wilde also contrasts this horrible and dirty other world with the world of Lord Henry and his regal companions. It has been interesting to see the parallels between each of Dorian’s worlds, like when Lord Henry says " I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly."(pg183) This directly speaks to the effects of Dorian’s life: although he gave up his goodness for beauty, is he necessarily the better when the truth of his soul is ugly?
ReplyDelete- eileen
Dorian has not only lost all his innocence and integrity by killing Basil but one could argue that he has developed a fear. He is scared of losing his beauty so he goes to great measures to maintain it. This fear can be represented by him being hunted down by James Vane. We only recently learned about James Vane chasing him down but in a metaphorical sense there have been things chasing him down for this entire book, aestheticism, which has lead him to be fearful. And has Master Yoda has said: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." Which is why he felt he had to kill Basil when he had been called out for the painting. And although James Vane is dead now, I feel like the chasing of Dorian still goes on. I also like the fact that the painting started bleeding after Basil died.
ReplyDeleteafter the events in the musty storage room, Dorian's True colors have been reveled. (at least for us), the facade of his beauty has melted away reveling a monster within. The funny thing is, Dorian knows of this about himself, he see's the monster and is ashamed of it, which ironically means there is still some good in him though he suppresses it. Nonetheless, he is completely paranoid that the consequences of his actions will soon catch up with him.
ReplyDelete‘“[Y]ou poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to anyone. It does harm.”
ReplyDelete“My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be going about like the converted, and the revivalist, warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that.... As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”’
This exchange between Dorian and Lord Henry in chapter nineteen is when Dorian confronts him about his influence on the immoral decisions he has made. Dorian believes the base of his influence to be the book Lord Henry gifted him, of which, he ironically called a “poisonous book”. The Picture of Dorian Grey had been referred to that moniker as well, due to its deviation from what was deemed acceptable during those times; the not-so-subtle homoerotic tones of the book being just one of the themes inappropriate then. The yellow book in question had been an obsession of Dorian’s, even having it rebound in different coloring just to parallel his feelings at any given moment. In claiming the novel’s flawed and profound influence over him, it proves foreign to Wilde’s philosophy of aestheticism, as “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book…” Lord Henry, of course, rejects that accusation, regarding that no book could surely hold that much power. He observes that, while others can call a book immoral, it is really the showcasing the world its own shame that they find repulsive, in “the world calls immoral . . . books that show the world its own shame”. The latter chapters of the novel exhibit Dorian’s crash and burn, much like Macbeth’s, as Sara had mentioned. Chapter nineteen being among those chapters of his downfall, Lord Henry’s obsession with him insinuates an air of naivety around Lord Henry. Although Dorian had lived through the perspective of the philosophy and dealt with the consequences, Lord Henry had not, and therefore had not truly embraced his own ideology.