The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories

BRAVO Oscar Wilde for writing something pre-1900's that succeeds in keeping me interested throughout the entire time. The Picture of Dorian Gray, a gothic horror novel captures the themes of youth, corruption and identity in new ways that I've never really seen before. Basil Hallward is an artist whose “obsession” has been Dorian Gray, a beautiful young man and believes that he inspires a new form of art. Once a man whose sweet personality infatuated anyone who spoke to him, was altered once Gray met Hallward's friend Lord Henry Wotton, whose hedoism about how beauty and the senses are the only thing worth fulfulling in life is instilled in Gray's mind.

Realizing that he will lose his beauty once he ages, Gray sells his soul in order to maintain you, while his portrait would age and wither based on the debauchery and the sins that he commits in life. Estranging himself with the lords and the high profile Britons who were once good friends, Dorian begins to reflect on his life and murders Basil Hallward because he blames him for his unsettled fate.

At the end of the long tireless twisted life, Dorian tried different ways to turn his life around and start off with a clean new slate. Without succeeding, Dorian becomes fed up with the life he lives and studies his portrait, which has become wrinkled and sinful, reflecting the turbulent double life that he led. After 18 years of not aging, Dorian stabs the painting, without noticing that he would end up committing suicide. His body becomes frail and destroyed, unrecognizable to all and then his picture is restored to the beauty that Basil Hallward captivated.

The novel was craftly written and Wilde displayed the turbulent lives that people get tied up in when faced with questions of importance, the philosophy of life, and trying to defeat what the “spiritual” force has had destined for them. With other undertoning themes such as homosexuality, Wilde was definitely strong to write such a book during an era where such taboo was forbidden, but surely cannot be regretful of a novel that definitely makes the mind more stimulated.