I usually hate when school forces me to read a book, but I was surprised when I read “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde and thoroughly enjoyed it. I know that many people don’t want to even consider reading books that were written hundreds of years ago by a dead man, but this book is so good, I couldn’t put it down.
I think the main reason I liked it so much is because I’m young. If I re-read this book ten years from now, I would probably have a different opinion on it. The whole book is about a young, good-looking boy who sells his soul to be forever young and beautiful. The portrait of himself in his prime is withered and broken down with every unethical and sinful decision he makes. I think Wilde was reaching out to younger generations because he hits on many themes that youth glorifies. The biggest point is beauty, and Wilde makes it the most important and driving force of the novel. Beauty trumps everything, hence the selling the soul bit. Intelligence is frowned upon when there is someone who is beautiful and “interesting.”
“But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.”
The youthful and beautiful are so worried about becoming old and uninteresting, that they play at society. This is so relevant to our generation. Obviously not all of our generation is like this, but there are many. There is an undercurrent of sexual tension throughout the novel with multiple parties. It’s ironic that the end of the book is sort of what goes around comes around because the whole novel is preaching about getting youth back somehow. I came away from reading this knowing I need to prevent my spiritual demise, and to make sure that I keep a place in society no matter what.
“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral-immoral from the scientific point of view.”
“Why?”
“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.”
There are different movie adaptations of this book, but my favorite is the most recent one. It has some well-known actors, including Ben Barnes as Dorian Gray and Colin Firth as Lord Henry Wotton, and has other not-quite so-famous people. The undercurrent of sexual tension in the book is blown up by a thousand in the movie. It’s very sexual, so fair warning on that. It gets pretty weird at some points, but overall I think it’s an accurate adaptation that stays true to the book.
