The thread all about good books

The Picture of Dorian Gray-Oscar Wilde

 Spoiler

The story's title character is an exceptionally handsome young man who, both in the eyes of the artist tasked to paint his portrait, Basil Hallward, and in those of their somewhat older friend Lord Henry Wotton, epitomizes perfect beauty and is coveted by both men for that very reason. Seduced by hedonistic Lord Henry into believing that beauty can literally justify anything, including any act of immorality, Dorian sells his soul for maintaining his beautiful appearance, letting his portrait age in his stead. (In that, his character resembles Goethe's and Marlowe's Faust.) He then quickly turns from an innocent youth into a cruel and calculating man whom society, in its shallow adherence to appearances, nonetheless never associates with any of the results of his cruelty, never looking beyond the surface of his handsome exterior and assuming that a man so beautiful must necessarily also be good.

God, this book was awesome. I recently finished this for a high school Western Literature class. Oscar Wilde's wit and sarcasm found in epigrams and some of Lord Henry Wotton's dialogue kept the book actually fresh and somewhat humorous at times for me. Lord Henry Wotton is definitely one of classic literature's more interesting characters. What I really liked about this was how excellent Wilde is at presenting Dorian's gradual changes in character and the impact of the painting on himself as it builds slowly towards the revelations at the ending. However, the one thing I dislike about this book is the large amount of ambling, directionless conversations that appear within the book; but the rest is pretty riveting and thrilling to me. Wilde himself said that he did not like for morals to mix with art due to the aestheticism movements going around in England during his time, so I'm not entirely sure of this, but I felt that the story moves in a direction where the reader is almost hoping for some sort of moral justice to satisfy them at the ending due to Dorian growing increasingly cruel.

I WAS GOING TO READ THAT! Too bad the library didn't have it then.

I'll have to check up on it soon because i was really looking forward to reading it.