Dorian Gray

Dorian Gray

1. Painting

   • "there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth...seemed to linger" - forever scarred his soul - painting taking on his sins
   • "misshapen shadow that had to bear the burden" - distorted reality - personifies painting - always on his conscience
   • "Blood crept from its face" - murder - crime - "it" - unnatural - detaches one self
   • "curved wrinkle of a hypocrite" - cruelty and emotion always emphasised in the lips - tries to repent but is hopeless
   • "Eyes of a devil" - pure evil - huge contrast from simple nature

2. Innocent, youthful, naive

   • "Young Adonis"
   • "Brainless beautiful creature" - not human - Godly - beauty over intelligence
   • "He has a simple and beautiful nature" - innocence - feminine description
   • "curved scarlet lips...blue eyes...crisp gold hair" - feminine description - colour imagery - red (lust)
   • "Prince charming"

3. Dorian is exceptionally vain and becomes convinced, in the course of a brief conversation with Lord Henry, that his most salient characteristics—his youth and physical attractiveness—are ever waning.

   • "His own beauty cam on him like a revelation" - object of love becomes himself
   • "I would give my soul for that" - foreshadows road to self-destruction - turning point

4. At first LH is intrigued by Dorian - role reversal - DG becomes infatuated by LH.

   • "Yes I feel I must come" - imperative - obligation - asserting control
   • "Wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes" - sin - corrupt - attracted by wit - indulgence - temptation

5. Throughout the novel he experiences new things and become more corrupt and commits more bad deeds due to Henry's influence and the yellow book

   • "Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book" - connotes dark, evil - dangerous
   • "More interested in the corruption of his own soul" - sinister - curious as to what will keep happening - beauty in the changing painting
   • "Fascination of sin" - dark - oxymoron - wrong to find sin pleasurable
   • "Friendship so fatal" - become the corrupter - leads to death
   • "You corrupt everyone with whom you become intimate with"

6. Dorian falls in love with Sibyl vane - many feel that he fell in love with her acting ability and the characters she played - soon as she cannot act he loses interest in her and acts horrifically towards her

   • "his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain" - harsh features - anger - hyperbolic
   • "You have killed my love" - bitter harsh words
   • "Without your art, you are nothing" - importance of art to DG - only in love because of her art
   • "She had no right to kill herself. It was selfish of her" - Ironic - cannot take responsibility for his actions