It didn't. I should have just skipped to the last page. So to save you, dear reader, the same pain I went through, is the summary of Dorian Gray spoilers, of course : Dorian semi-consciously makes Faustian bargain to transfer all his sins and signs of age to his portrait. He sins and feels guilty about it, but keeps doing it anyway.
Surprise, it breaks the spell, and he is left ugly, old and dead while his portrait returns to its original form. The end. You can thank me later. View all comments. Facts that I know for sure: 1.
I got this edition because I'm a slave to the aesthetics and that's exactly the kind of motive the ghost of Oscar Wilde would approve of 2. View all 24 comments. Oct 24, Ruby Granger rated it it was amazing.
Lord Henry is a paradigmatic sophist and his epigrams are delightful partly because it's easy to forget that he is more rhetoric than truth. The connection between youthful appearance and character is also so fascinating, especially since Wilde is writing at the end of the century where physiognomy is an outdated science. What does it mean to be young? And can innocence ever be restored? Wilde delves into the cartesian dualist debate, asking us to question where the self truly does reside and contradicting the popular Victorian idea of physiognomy.
In his personal Fall and descent into sinfulness I saw similarities with H. Wells's 'The Invisible Man' where sin thrives simply because the individual cannot be held accountable. Similarly, the debate about the value of art is intriguing and, after reading this, I recommend reading Poe's 'The Oval Mirror' because, again, there are definite similarities. View 2 comments. So I read all of Wilde's plays a couple of years ago but for some reason I never read this at the time.
This is probably the number one most requested book for me to read. So I read it. Are ya happy now!? ARE YA!? I really rather enjoyed this. Well, obviously. It's by Oscar Wilde for fuck's sake. His prose is like spilled honey flowing across a wooden table and waterfalling onto the floor beneath. The viscous liquid So I read all of Wilde's plays a couple of years ago but for some reason I never read this at the time. The viscous liquid flowing slowly over the edge.
His plot, perfectly paced, moves slowly as we wade deeper and deeper into Dorian Gray's maniacal life. Over the edge we go as everything goes wrong, there's death, there's pain, there's long conversations about art.
We hit the floor as we finish and we see nothing but sweetness amassing around us as we escape from Wilde's prose. Putting the book down you see the light has hit the stream and it glows and it shines and it sparkles and you stand there mesmorised by what you're witnessing and you put the book back on your shelf and feel sorry for the book you read next.
So, yeah, it's good. View all 11 comments. There was this book, written in such a beautiful way, using such colourful and flowery language and there were those three amazing characters that made me feel and wonder and question their lives and decisions!
It was an entirely new world for me and I was totally fascinated by it. So I read this book and I savoured every sentence, I devoured its wisdom and got lost in its pages! And I genuinely hope that many other people will read it as well. If you prefer to stay innocent you better leave before my spoilers get to you and corrupt your soul!
It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Dorian definitely is a charming character! Even at his worst he still seems to retain that innocent outlook at things. I mean he was corrupted and tainted by Lord Henry, and he ends up corrupting and tainting his friends but despite all of this he still wonders why they have become like that. What is even more intriguing is that Dorian actually wants to be good!
Do I want to be good? And even more important: Can I resist being bad? Will he do the right thing or is he going to give into his bad side? Is his bad side truly that bad? Is having a little fun with his friends and to indulge in pleasure wrong or is it just a part of being human? The fate of Dorian Gray makes you think and it involuntarily causes you to face your own demons and weaknesses. It ultimately causes you to acknowledge your own vices and fears.
In short: It makes you pause and forces you to ponder your own life-choices! And this is nothing but awesome! Or had his choice already been made? Yes, life had decided that for him — life, and his own infinite curiosity about life. Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins — he was to have all these things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all. I want to use them, to enjoy them and to dominate them.
Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. How much I love that bastard! How much damage they did to his soul! Lord Henry is the kind of character you just got to love. Arrogant, intelligent, wise, self-confident, brutally honest and completely unapologetic about his inappropriate behaviour. Lord Henry is basically the embodiment of temptation and young and innocent Dorian wants to be seduced!
I swear he says the wisest things and vocalizes the most accurate statements regarding society! I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Well, at least not as much as Harry does! You talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you. He always breaks his own. I beg you not to go. And this is the key moment! The very first time Dorian Gray finds himself at a crossroads and choses the wrong path.
You gotta love Oscar Wilde for the subtle intensity of this scene! Yours seem to lose all sense of honour, of goodness, of purity. You have filled them with a madness for pleasure. They have gone down into the depths. You led them there. You were to me such an ideal as I shall never meet again. This is the face of a satyr. It has the eyes of a devil. Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid and cruel!
One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! I think their dynamic and their interactions are very interesting and to me it seems like Lord Henry is some sort of catalyst. Which is kind of interesting, if you consider that Oscar Wilde was gay. In contrast to Wilde no one holds Dorian Gray to account though. He gets away with all of his sins and in the end this eventually causes him to destroys himself! What a moral punchline! You are a wonderful creation.
You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know. There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. Your voice and the voice of Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget.
When I close my eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I don't know which to follow. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us.
I know it. I fall in love with this book over and over again. View all 33 comments. I finished reading this last night, and afterwards I spent an entire hour staring into space so I could contemplate over the majesty of this work. It left me speechless. This book is exquisite; it is an investigation into the human soul, the power of vanity and the problems of living a life with not a single consequence for your actions.
It begins with a simple realisation, and perhaps an obvious one. But, for Dorian it is completely life changing. He realises that bea I finished reading this last night, and afterwards I spent an entire hour staring into space so I could contemplate over the majesty of this work. He realises that beauty is finite. So when that goes what do you have left? No friends. No love. Only age. So what do you do? How do you retain your singular quality? I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful.
But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that -- for that -- I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!
Everything he does is attributed to the painting, everything. Any regret or malice leaves him quickly and is transferred to the canvas. He becomes a shell, an emotionless creature who can only seek his sin: vanity.
He surrounds himself with beauty. His house is full of art, brilliant music and every luxury known to man. You name it. The prefect moment is all he lives for. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them. Also he is suggestive of the Victorian ideal of the perfect societal image. One must be respectable at all times, and have all the appropriate airs and graces. But behind closed doors, or perhaps even a curtain, anything goes.
He is suggestive of the hidden evils of Victorian society as behind the mask was many dark things. For example, the Empire and colonialism to the Victorians was a wonderful thing; it built wealth and structure, but in reality it destroyed culture and subjected peoples to slavery. The same things can be said of child labour, the exploitation of women and terrible working conditions. Everything exists behind a veil of grandeur, and this is no less true for Dorian. The homosexual suggestions are practically ground-breaking.
Silly Victorians. The novel also shows that despite being corrupted to such a degree, to commit murder in such a terrible sense, Dorian the Victorian man? He can still come back from his deeds and end it all. The ending was perfection. This has great allegorical meaning. View all 28 comments. Some of u have never damned ur soul to remain forever young and it shows.
View all 5 comments. I should probably admit that most of what I thought I knew about Dorian Gray came from pop culture references. In my defense, I'm actively trying to branch out and read more than comics and trashy romance novels, but it's slow going and I've got a lot of catching up to do.
Shockingly, I didn't bother to read the blurb, and it turns out this was a bit more complex than I thought it would be. Point is , I had no idea it was about gay dudes! And I'm always thinking that the guys in classic novels seem I should probably admit that most of what I thought I knew about Dorian Gray came from pop culture references. And I'm always thinking that the guys in classic novels seem kinda gay, but then everyone tells me no, men were just more sensitive back then , and I just sorta pretend to believe them and we all go on about our day.
But there's no way that's the case here. Anyway, I said that to say this: this book was waaaay more interesting than I thought it was going to be when I first decided to read it. I mean, having to hide that you're in love with someone is awful no matter what the reason, but potentially getting tossed in the clink and having your life ruined because people think it's wrong is a whole other level of horrible.
Poor Basil! My heart just went out to that guy! He was so decent and so sweet. And yet somehow his love for Dorian, so pure it created a painting that seemed to capture the essence of Dorian's soul, became twisted by Lord Henry's influencing Dorian to desire youth and beauty above all else. Enter the wacky Crayola curse!
And the really sad thing was that Dorian wasn't evil in the beginning. Selfish and silly, yes. But not truly bad. Which made watching him slip slowly at first, then eventually plunge headlong into villainy, even more tragic. The longer you live the easier it is to see what a slippery slope life can be, and how one bad choice left uncorrected can lead to far worse things.
The only one who escaped relatively unscathed was the instigator, Henry. And isn't that just the way it always goes? There's always that fucking asshole who sets shit into motion and then steps aside to watch everyone else flail around in the mess they've created. Albeit, this time around it was a bit of a supernatural mess This is one of the few classics that I've found to be meaty, interesting, and still has characters that ring true.
Loved it! This is the cover of the audiobook I listened to which was published by Author's Republic and narrated by John Gonzalez. I've had great luck in general with classic audiobooks, but this was the exception to the rule. It seemed to me as though the narrator almost stumbled over words sometimes, and beyond that, the reading was just sort of off. View all 59 comments. This is the first time I've read this classic book There is much to take away from this book.
Themes exploring shallowness, selfishness, superficiality, hedonism, morality, and flaws of life and being human. The dialogue is witty and humorous. Oscar Wilde had great insights on beauty I love this quote: "But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.
Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys t This is the first time I've read this classic book The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learn professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of 80 what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful".
Very reflective read View all 39 comments. When the young gentleman Dorian Gray from a wealthy aristocratic family in Victorian England, has his picture completed something is missing, Basil Hallward, the painter senses it and insists that no one sees his greatest work, except a few people The witty Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian's soon to be best friend seems amused, a shy artist!
All three are fascinated by the painting "A face without a heart", so said Shakespeare in Hamlet, but it applies to the portrait of Dorian Gray even better All three are fascinated by the painting, discussing it at length in Mr.
Hallward's house. The lord is a notorious man, with a well- deserved evil reputation, warned by many to stay away from him. While entertaining guests, he notices James Vane peering in through a window, and he becomes wracked by fear and guilt. When a hunting party accidentally shoots and kills Vane, Dorian feels safe again.
He resolves to amend his life but cannot muster the courage to confess his crimes, and the painting now reveals his supposed desire to repent for what it is—hypocrisy. In a fury, Dorian picks up the knife he used to stab Basil Hallward and attempts to destroy the painting.
There is a crash, and his servants enter to find the portrait, unharmed, showing Dorian Gray as a beautiful young man. On the floor lies the body of their master—an old man, horribly wrinkled and disfigured, with a knife plunged into his heart.
Ace your assignments with our guide to The Picture of Dorian Gray! Trailer Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray trailer - UK. Photos Top cast Edit. Pip Torrens Victor as Victor. Fiona Shaw Agatha as Agatha. Maryam d'Abo Gladys as Gladys. Louise Kempton Prostitute as Prostitute.
Oliver Parker. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. A lovelorn artist. A corruptible Lord. A deal with the Devil. It all paints a dark picture of a Victorian London and how the rich and infamous party at their peril. Here, the telling of time and its consequence of experience for life's treasures' takes its toll on the body, mind and soul.
The haunting and bleak tale of power, greed, vanity and inevitable self-destruction is ever present amongst the deceit, opium dens and sin. It is at this point that Dorian exclaims his wish that the picture should take all of the knocks of the world and he himself should never age.
Dorian's rather rash wish becomes true and what follows is a series of events that show how Dorian is living up to the debauched life Lord Henry has suggested for him. However this lifestyle comes with a price and Dorian becomes obsessed with is portrait, often being impressed with the evil of his soul but also committing several odd behaviours in order that no one else should ever set eyes on it. Furthermore everyone around him seems to die or fall under some great misfortune and it soon becomes obvious to society that even though Dorian has money and therefore status, he is still a character to be avoided.
The central protagonist's ultimate act of evil is when he murders Basil, the very man who painted the picture and whom Dorian believes is the cause of all the fiendishness in his soul.
Finally however, Dorian decides that he is being silly and that he shouldn't allow himself to be ruled over by a portrait and so he stabs it but in doing so, restores the portrait to its original appearance and unintentionally takes his own life. Oscar Wilde himself comments that this novel is based on the Faustian themes which would have been very well known to all of the educated men of his time, and it is very easy to see parallels between the legend and this story.
Dorian himself would represent the character of Faust, who gives up his soul in order to have beauty forever, as he cries 'Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!
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