The Picture of Dorian Gray is about a man who chooses beauty and youth over happiness. Basil Hallward, an artist, paints a picture of his friend Dorian Gray. Dorian then becomes mesmerized by the picture and how young and beautiful he looks. One of Basil's friends Lord Henry begins to take interest in Dorian and puts a lot of ideas into his head about the importance of beauty and youth and how Dorian should take advantage and embrace his looks. Dorian decides he would give up his soul to the devil to remain young and beautiful forever, and have the potrait that Basil painted for him age instead of himself. Dorian becomes a changed person because of the ideas that Lord Henry gave him and does not care if he sins. All of the sins he makes has an effect on the portrait and the way that it ages and looks. He becomes infatuated with an actress, Sibyl Vane, and she refers to him as "Prince Charming". Her brother doesn't want her to get hurt, so he vows to kill him if he hurts her. Once Dorian realizes that she isn't as pure and beautiful as she is onstage and that it is all just acting, he realized that he doesn't care for her or want to marry her, so she kills herself. Basil goes to Dorian's house to question him about the incident, and Dorian gets mad and blames him for causing all of this by making the picture and stabs him to death. He then blackmails an old friend into disposing of the body. Dorian goes to a bar and a man overhears him being referred to as "Prince Charming" and confronts him outside for being the reason that his sister, Sibyl, killed herself. He had a gun and was about to shoot him when Dorian told him to look at his face and how young he is, and that he could not have possibly be old enough to be the man that he thinks he is. The man agrees and lets him go, but he later learns that Dorian is really the guy and that he just has not aged in 18 years. Dorian sees Sibyl's brother by his house and fears for his life, but then the man ends up getting shot from a stray arrow while two gentlemen are target shooting. Dorian looks at his portrait to see if anything has become better and the sins not as apparent, but nothing has changed and he picks up the knife that killed Basil and stabs the portrait. The servants hear a scream and call the police, and they find Dorians body with a knife in his chest and his body has been ugly and aged, and the picture back to being the way that Basil had painted it in the first place.
1. Do you think that the influence of another person, like Lord Henry onto Dorian, can change the way that we perceive ourselves and others?
2. Would you want to live "forever young"?
9 comments:
2. I do not think I would want to be young forever because part of life is outgrowing that stage and moving on to bigger and better things.
1. I definitely think that someone can influence someone else, but I don't think that it can necessarily happen in as dramatic of a way as with Lord Henry and Dorian. That was just too extreme.
2. No, I wouldn't want to be forever young because there are too many other things to do in life. There are so many experiences you'd have to be left out of.
1)I think all poeple have influences on each other. Even if we dont want it to be true, we take the opinions of others to heart and we change. I agree with Amanda on how it would not be that dramatic like in the novel.
2)I do not think i would like to live forever young, because then i wouldn't experience growing old,which is one of the experiences of life. I would be left out on changing.
1. Yeah i think it was kind of extreme too in the novel. People definitely do influence other people and most people subconsciously follow what other people think and their opinions. But Dorian in the novel let Lord Henry decide too much for him and influence him too much.
2) I would not want to live "forever young" because then I would not get to experience all the stages of life. In each stage, you learn something new.
I think it is easy to let someone change the way we think about ourselves if we do not think highly enough of our own thoughts and actions. That is why it is important to learn to value your own thoughts and opinions and to be comfortable with who you are.
I do not believe that I would like to be forever young; I believe the reason that people are so motivated to live their lives to the fullest is because they know their life is finite. I feel like if I was forever young I would forget that concept and not live life to the fullest.
yeah i agree with not wanting to live "forever young". There really would be no point in doing anything in life because you will always be in the same place you are and not get to experience life.
For question one, I believe that someone who is important to one can have great influence on the choices one makes. If someone I greatly respected told me to change for the "better" even though it may be for the worse, I would probably change.
1. Influences by others definitely change how we perceive ourselves. If someone is constantly telling me something about myself, even if it's not true, I would start to believe it and would most likely start to change to act as they see me.
2. I would not like to live forever young. We have so much life to live, and the whole point of it is go out and learn new things as we grow old, so staying forever young would be going against everything.
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