What is the story behind Dorian Gray?

What is the story behind Dorian Gray?

Dorian Gray was clearly based on a living person, a member of Wilde's literary homosexual circle in the early 1890s when the story was first published. ... It is a reminder of how wrong it was to cast the saturnine Ioan Gruffudd as John Gray in the Stephen Fry movie Wilde: the real Gray was much blonder and more exquisite.

What sins did Dorian Gray commit?

Dorian is a young and beautiful man who makes a Faustian pact that his self-portrait, drawn by painter Basil Hallward, would grow older as time past instead of Dorian. Throughout the story, Dorian commits many sins, for example, using his influence to ruin others' lives and the murdering of Basil Hallward.

What is the main message of Dorian Gray?

The main theme of The Picture of Dorian Gray is the relationship between beauty and morality. Oscar Wilde plays on the Renaissance idea of the correspondence between the physical and spiritual realms: beautiful people are moral people; ugly people are immoral people.

Why is Dorian GREY immortal?

Immortality: After having his soul trapped within a painting, Dorian gained immortality. He does not age and seems to be immune to all conventional illnesses, diseases, viruses and infections.

What happens to Dorian Gray?

On returning home, Dorian notices that the portrait has changed; his wish has come true, and the man in the portrait bears a subtle sneer of cruelty. ... In anger, Dorian blames his fate on Basil and stabs him to death.

How did Dorian Gray become immortal?

Immortality: After having his soul trapped within a painting, Dorian gained immortality. He does not age and seems to be immune to all conventional illnesses, diseases, viruses and infections.

What evil did Dorian Gray do?

Dorian Gray also suffers the penalty of death owing to his own selfishness and greed. He grows obsessed with the transformation of the portrait; he views the evil of his own nature, ugly and grotesque, in the painting.

What is the Yellow Book in The Picture of Dorian Gray?

The Yellow Book The book represents the profound and damaging influence that art can have over an individual and serves as a warning to those who would surrender themselves so completely to such an influence.

What does Dorian Gray fear?

Dorian's fear points to an important theme in the book: A life devoted solely to the pursuit of selfish pleasure will always be marred by self-con-scious fear. Dorian has what he wants — eternal youth and a life filled with pleasure — but he can't fully enjoy his life for fear that his secret will be discovered.

How did Dorian sell his soul?

The legend tells of a learned doctor who sells his soul to the devil in return for knowledge and magical abilities. Although Dorian Gray never contracts with the devil, his sacrifice is similar: he trades his soul for the luxury of eternal youth.

Who is Dorian Gray in the picture of Dorian Grey?

• Dorian Gray, fictional character, the hedonistic protagonist of Oscar Wilde ’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). He exchanges his soul for youth that never fades.

Why is Dorian Gray important in A Clockwork Orange?

• Dorian Gray. At the opening of the novel, Dorian Gray exists as something of an ideal: he is the archetype of male youth and beauty. As such, he captures the imagination of Basil Hallward, a painter, and Lord Henry Wotton, a nobleman who imagines fashioning the impressionable Dorian into an unremitting pleasure-seeker.

Why is Dorian Gray important to Basil Hallward's painting?

• Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty; he believes that Dorian's beauty is responsible for the new mood in his art as a painter.

What does Dorian resolve to do in the portrait?

• Dorian resolves to live a life of hedonistic values and that he will maintain his youth and beauty while his portrait bears the marks of age and experience instead. Basil is hurt to find that this change has come over Dorian and blames Lord Henry’s influence.