Goodbye Dorian, you will be missed(?)

As this is my last entry, I thought I would watch the movie version of the film, the 2009 edition with the heavenly Colin Firth.  I then ran out of time and couldn't find the movie anywhere, so here's Plan B.  I'm going to look back at my first blog post and reflect on how I viewed the characters after reading just a fourth of the story versus how I view it now.

Lord Henry Wotton:

Ah, the only surviving character of the first bunch I wrote about so long ago.  What I wrote of Lord Henry earlier still fits quite well with how he acts at the ending of the story.  He is still cunning, mischievous, and manipulative.  He is the one who convinces Dorian that Sybil Vane dying is actually a gift is disguise.  Something I found surprising is that after that very same conversation, though Henry is still important to Dorian, Wilde tends to leave him out of the story.  Henry shows up at parties, makes snide remarks to Dorian's guests about love and loss, but he isn't the forefront of the dialogue or manipulation of Dorian.  I believe this is because Dorian finds a way to corrupt himself, and does not look to Henry to convince him of himself anymore.  Though when Henry does come to convince Dorian in the final sequence before Dorian's apparent suicide, he fails to show the same persuasion he had over Dorian long ago.  Dorian even recognizes that Henry is some what of a poison to him and others.  Overall, I believe Henry is a character that does not seem to learn or grow in comparison to some of the others.

Basil Hallward:

Basil is very much unchanged after the story ends.  Of course he is dead, but that doesn't mean his character really changed much besides that.  He does seem more at ease when arguing with Dorian, but finds himself, in his final chapter, still only seeing Dorian as a pure, innocent man.  He is still soft spoken and rather anti-social.  He is jumpy and excitable, and finds the need to be quite melodramatic.  As Basil views Dorian's portrait after twenty years of Dorian's sinning, he quickly rushes to pray, exclaiming about how awful and "accursed" the portrait is.  Though Dorian kills him for this, I believe Basil is pure-hearted, and I recall Kendall and I being furious that Dorian would have killed him because he was the only character "that was tolerable".  Overall, much like I said earlier in my entry, after Henry and Dorian meet, Basil becomes almost irrelevant.  He is simply the creator of Dorian's portrait, which, I'll admit, drive the story.

Sybil Vane:

It was kind of funny looking back at this entry because I had stated that Sybil would probably become an important character.  But within the next quarter of the book, she was dead.  That doesn't mean that she did not become important, because she is actually the turning point in Dorian's attitude.  After confronting Sybil on how vain and poorly she acted, Dorian notices that the portrait of himself had changed.  This being his first sin, or the first one large enough to have recognition from the portrait, changes Dorian completely.  After moving past Sybil's death, with the help of Henry, Dorian is reckless, and this is partially because of Sybil's death that he comes to this state.  After Sybil's death, the story revolves around Dorian and his new found love of sins, and I think that is Sybil's real impact on the story.

Dorian Gray:

Dorian obviously is the character that grew the most throughout the story, though in a more negative way than anything else.  Overall, with Dorian's ability to sin as he pleases, he turns away from Henry, and tends to manipulate his own group of friends.  Basil speaks to how Dorian's new found friends end up ruined, as Dorian's influence causes recklessness.  What I find most intriguing is that even though Dorian spends most of the second half of the book corrupting those around them, he finds his own salvation in the end.  I think by taking to destroying the portrait, it is a way for Dorian to recognize his own destruction and use it as a way of redemption.  Of course this does not end well for him, as he "stabbed the picture" and ended up "a dead man, dressed in evening clothes, with a knife in his heart," (221).  What I thought was interesting, and maybe I'm going out on a limb here, is that when they found his dead body, they could not recognize him until they studied the rings on his fingers, as if his wealth and vanity were the only things they truly saw in him, and not his personality.

Themes, Themes, Themes

I have always found it difficult to identify themes, no matter what story I may be reading.  I find that I can pick out major ideas, but those are mostly one word thoughts and do not outline what the meaning of the work as a whole may be.  Like with Dorian's story, youth and vanity were major components, but it is difficult for me to pick out what Wilde means with those ideas.  So here is my best effort at identifying themes.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the major ideas Wilde brings up revolves around the ideas of youth and vanity.  More so I believe that the theme is that youth and vanity allow others to overlook problems, and they can blind us from the truth of a person.  As Dorian goes through his life, the painting that Basil painted is the object that ages rather than Dorian.  This meaning that Dorian's sins did not affect Dorian in a physical manner.  Even as James Vane threatens to kill Dorian for the death of his younger sister Sybil, Dorian is saved by the fact that he looks exactly as he did at the time of her death eighteen years earlier.  But the fact of the matter is that Dorian set about corrupting the people around him and faced no fault because he was not affected physically by his sins.  Most people who met him believed instantly that Dorian, being so youthful and beautiful, could not anything negative or criminal.  Basil even says this, stating "with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvelous untroubled youth -- I can't believe anything against you," (149).  The idea that youth, beauty, wealth can allow even the most sinful people to live freely is something I believe Wilde was speaking out against within his society.

Another theme I found was the powers of influence and how they affect characters in the story.  From the very beginning, Basil begs Harry not to influence Dorian, because Lord Henry can only have a bad influence on those around him.  From Lord Henry's first encounter with Dorian, the shift in Dorian's character is quite obvious.  His new found obsession with youth comes from Harry's influence and Dorian's obsession leads to the corruption of himself and is the original cause of the portrait taking on Dorian's sins rather than Dorian himself.  Even though Harry does play a large role in corrupting Dorian, and continues in the story to affect different characters, Dorian begins to do the same to his companions.  Basil came to him one night claiming that Dorian's friends "seem to lose all sense of honor, of goodness, of purity," (150).  This is because Dorian himself does not need to fear the consequences of his sins, because he will not be affected by them.  So as Dorian has the ability to do as he pleases, his influence on his friends is negative in a way that ruins them to the society they are living in.  This all helps to develop the theme that negative influence is powerful and harmful to people.

Overall, I believe Wilde was trying to criticize the upper class and the influence it has over the English society in the story.  Wilde may have been trying to speak towards the society he was living in, because the descriptions seen in the story would fit into the 1890s.  I believe that The Picture of Dorian Gray does still contribute to our society today.  Wealth and beauty still play a large role in how we view certain people and how we treat them.  A clear view of influence in today's society and the harmful role it can play can be seen looking into the presidential election.  A lot of conservative candidates are using the misunderstood stigma's of certain groups of people to strike fear into voters, and those voters believe the candidates are the best solution to their fears.  I believe Wilde's themes could help highlight the faults that even today's society faces.