Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Choose a
couple of these prompts and write freely in response to them. As comments come up on the blog, engage with
one another.
Doing this assignment will earn you bonus points that I can use to supplement other grades.
1)
The
Picture of Dorian Gray is full of symbols.
The ambience of the opening is enhanced, for example, by the view Lord
Henry has of “the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a
laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a
beauty so flame-like as theirs …” (43).
A laburnum is a poisonous tree of the pea family. The live object of beauty here that casts its shadow over Lord Henry—just as Dorian does. Like the tree, Dorian turns out to be poisonous to be many characters in the book even as his beauty is untainted. Like the tree, Dorian also has difficulty bearing the “burden” of a “flame-like” beauty.
A laburnum is a poisonous tree of the pea family. The live object of beauty here that casts its shadow over Lord Henry—just as Dorian does. Like the tree, Dorian turns out to be poisonous to be many characters in the book even as his beauty is untainted. Like the tree, Dorian also has difficulty bearing the “burden” of a “flame-like” beauty.
à Look carefully through some of your favorite passages in the book. What other symbols can you see? Can you spell out their significance to the themes and/or the dilemma of the main characters—Lord Henry, Basil, Dorian.
2)
What
is the function of Sybil Vane in the book?
What does she tell us about Dorian?
What is her relation to the theme of art’s impact of life and life’s
impact on art? Focus on the detail given
(or not given—that is also significant) and write a couple of paragraphs about
her significance.
3)
Read
closely pp. 62-70 (for those of you with texts other than the Broadview one
this is the second part of Ch 2 from when Lord Henry says “Because you have the
most marvelous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having” onwards—to the
end). This is the “temptation” scene and
when Dorian utters the wish to trade his soul for eternal youth. Consider carefully what is going on
here. Who is to blame ultimately for
Dorian’s decline into corruption? Is it
Lord Henry, the devil figure, who tempts him?
Is it Basil who captures human beauty and idolizes it in a painting? Is it Dorian himself? Is Dorian fully enough developed as a
character in this book for us to be able to make a judgment on his own
culpability?
