How Art Relates to Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray Essay

How Art Relates to Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian GrayOscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel most a young, handsome, and vain man who has his portrait painted, and impulsively wishes that he could forevermore remain just as handsome as he is in the painting -- that the painting would age instead of him. He gets his wish in a most eerie way as, with passing years, he becomes more and more dissolute and evil, while the changes that one would expect to appear on his spunk are reflected in the portrait instead. What this book is about, clearly, is feelings and appearances becoming real. This motif is echoed and re-echoed end-to-end the book. Early in the novel, Sir Henry Wotten -- a cynical hedonist -- gives Dorian a book about people who tried to experience everything, some(prenominal) good and evil, and Dorian decides to try it in other words, he models his sustenance after a work of art. The fact that Dorians one female passion is an actress -- a person who wea rs masks and pretends to be someone she is non -- reinforces this motif. When she reveals herself to be real, his detestation for her is so overwhelming that it reaches out like an evil spirit and kills her Dorian and so move outed Sybil as surely as he would murder Basil later on.We tell small children that their feelings are not actions and therefore have no repercussions of their own, but deep in our psyches we know this is not so. The reason tribal...