The Picture of Dorian Gray Chapters 1-5

Preface

• Expressive of Wilde’s aesthetic philosophy

  • Art for arts sake

• Defensive of his work

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

• Foreshadows the role of the main characters

  • Basil-- the artist

  • Lord Henry-- the critic

  • Sybil-- the medium

  • Dorian-- the art

“Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are--my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks--we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”

Influence

• Lord Henry affect Dorian who affects Basil’s painting

  • Dorian’s beauty affects Basil’s work

“There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way--I wonder will you understand me?--his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before.”

• Dorian brings out the best in Basil’s work

  • Lord Henry speech affects Dorian

    • His speech is more impacting than beauty

      • Impacts the innocent Dorian

      • Meant to impact the reader

Lord Henry

• Every character in the book is influenced by him

  • With the expectation of Basil

• Basil does not want him to influence Dorian

  • Henry very much influences Dorian the most.

“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view."

• Makes Dorian realise his own beauty and believe that beauty and youth is only things worth meaning and makes him see the world through a different lens

“He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him.”

• Paradoxes in Henry’s Language

  • Lack of simplicity

  • He is happy with himself

  • No longer finds satisfaction in emotions, as he has made himself detached from them, he finds pleasure in these games of intellect

  • Looks like he is stimulating Dorian —> he wants to stimulate his intellect (like Socrates’ idea that philosophy is already in the people and has to be brought out by debate)

    • Henry would like to be philanthropic

    • He justifies his corruption of Dorian with philanthropy

    • He is lowering him down to his level —> values of youth

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”

“The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic.”

“Those who are faithful know only the pleasures of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”

“He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.”

The Painting

• Although Lord Henry has a hand in making Dorian aware of his own beauty-- it is ultimately the painting that does

“I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose.”

• Dorian becomes jealous of the painting

• Puts into perspective how youth and beauty are fleeting

• Feels like Basil only values him for his looks although that is not true

• Makes Dorian realise and fear his own morality

“How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will always remain 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!"

• The portrait is a constant reminder that he will age and grow old

Basil

“You know how I love secrecy. It is the only thing that can make modern life wonderful or mysterious to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.”

• Brings romance

“As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me”

• Art

  • Basil is totally involved with his work and it is the aspect of being an artist

  • He also puts himself into the art as much as he does what the art is really about

Dorian

“One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world.”

“He was made to be worshipped.”

“Dorian’s whims are laws to everybody, except himself.”

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”

“Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I will kill myself.”

Lord Henry and Dorian

• Lord Henry wants to influence Dorian

  • He wants to shape the very being of Dorian

“Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow.... There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of Influence.”

• He views life and art as the same

  • Plays into the aestheticism that Wilde discussed in the preface

“It was delightful to watch him. With his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end.”

“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 someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for.”

• Lord Henry will take this away from Dorian-- the ability to become his own person

• He just wants Dorian to be like him

Language

• Especially flowery and extragrant

  • Art

• Constant use of flower and botany imagery

  • Symbolic of the theme of beauty

  • Nature vs love

    • Nature is immortal and beauty is not

“The heat was terribly oppressive, and the huge sunlight flamed like a monstrous dahlia with petals of fire.”

Henry v. Basil

• Basil tells Henry he doesn’t reply and understands much.

  • Henry talks about marriage and basil disagrees

  • Same with Henry’s idea of friendship

“Basil You can’t feel what I feel you change too often”

• So Henry changes more often than Basil does

• Henry is “self conscious and self-satisfied”

• Basil says about Henry:

“He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the exception of myself.”

• Could be because:

  • The relationship between the two

    • Compared as more of brothers than friends

  • Relationship between critic and artist

• The triangular relationship

  • Lord Henry wins out over Dorian-- Dorian is going to be influenced by him much more than Basil

    • He ditches Basil for Henry

    • Wants to hear him speak

Beauty

• Nature regains its beauty and regenerates itself but humans cannot keep their beauty

• Make the most of your youth, and seek new experiences now that the world is yours

• Language is indicative of this theme

Exploration of life

“Human life,—that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. There was nothing else of any value, compared to it. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one’s face a mask of glass, or keep the sulfurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature.”

Oscar Wilde

• References to Greece

  • same sex relationships were supported in Greece

  • Older man and younger man —> respected

• Hate against capitalism?

“Anybody, even a stockbroker, can look civilized (with a suit)”

Sybil Vane

• The significance of her name

  • Sybil: Greek prophet/ oracle that the gods spoke through

    • She is an actress and thus is the medium of art-- Playwrights express their art through her

  • Vane: as in vain-- failure?

• Compared to a flower

“The curves of her throat were like the curves of a white lily. Her hands seemed to be made of cool ivory.”

“red petals of her lips”

• Shakespeare also writes about this in his sonnets, and it is a nice parallelism because she is a

• Shakespearean actress.

• Calls Dorian “Prince Charming”

  • Expresses her naive and fairytale like view of the world

    • Foreshadows that she will be manipulated

    • Her mother was also manipulated by the upper class- similar to Dorian

  • She never met him

    • She only judges him based on appearance and he her

    • Very shallow

“Sibyl is the only thing I care about. What is it to me where she came from? From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and entirely divine.”

• Dorian is offered to know where she came from but turns it down

• Judges her solely on appearance

• She wishes the best for her brother and plans out his future

  • Reinforces the idea of her naivety

James Vane

• Foreshadowing

“Don't forget that you will have only one child now to look after, and believe me that if this man wrongs my sister, I will find out who he is, track him down, and kill him like a dog. I swear it.”

The Great Gatsby Chapters 7-9

Tom’s and Daisy’s Relationship

• Daisy showing off her daughter`

  • Getting back at Tom

  • Daisy sees her as an ornament

• Daisy running over Myrtle

  • Emphasizing her commitment to Tom

  • Gatsby’s car killed Myrtle

    • Gatsby car is gold-- like money

    • Symbolic of regular people suffering because of the rich

“They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale—and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.” (155)

• Plays into the overall theme of rich abusing the poor and class struggle

• Daisy chooses Tom over Gatsby

• Tom shatters Gatsby’s illusion of Daisy

  • His dream cannot trump their Tom’s and Daisy’s reality

  • Specifically, her daughter is her reality

Daisy’s voice

“Her voice is full of money” (126)

• Gatsby uses this to describe Daisy

• Demonstrating his class and wealth while also her superficiality

Mr. Wilson

“He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world and the shock had made him physically sick. I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less than an hour before—and it occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.” (132)

• Shows how Tom and Wilson are alike

“Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ash heaps, where small grey clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind.” (170)

• Use of color grey shows the decay of moral character

• Shows Wilson skewed morality

• Tom thinks Gatsby deserved to die

  • His blind arrogance allows him to do so

  • Feels no remorse

• Tom mourned terribly after Myrtle's death--had to give up New York apartment

• Nick describes him as childlike

• Too shallow and vacant to understand what he did

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….” (191)

• The rich like Daisy and Tom have no regard for the others around them and who they hurt

Gatsby’s funeral

• Owl eyed glasses

  • The real Eckleburg?

  • Also the man from the first part of the book

• Funeral for the American dream

  • Failure of it

  • The American dream is not a possibility

• His father comes

  • Proud of Gatsby

  • Slowly stares more and more at the wealth he amassed

Gatsby’s Death

• Gatsby shot in pool

  • Use of color grey

    • Shows how his reality and dream died in bleakness and a harsh world

“If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.” (172)

• Use of color red

  • Shows how he died

“‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’ I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him because I disapproved of him from beginning to end.” (164)

• Nick says this before his death

Class Struggle

• Gatsby is sacrificed while daisy continues with her life as normal

  • Gatsby did not know Daisy

  • Gatsby clings to the idea that Daisy needs him despite that not being the case

• Fitzgerald shows poor as collateral damage to a way of life

• Daisy and Tom continue with their normal life

“What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon, and the day after that, and the next thirty years?” (168)

Doctor Eckleburg

“I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window [...] and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me but you can’t fool God!’/ ‘ Standing behind him Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg which had just emerged pale and enormous from the dissolving night./ ‘God sees everything,’ repeated Wilson./ ‘That’s an advertisement,’ Michaelis assured him.” (170-171)

• Reminds how characters have shed their morality in pursuit of personal gain

• Money and Consumerism is god

  • Use of color gold

American Dream

• Green light

  • Finally describes it as the American Dream

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (193)

• Green Light: past dreams of the future

• People try to achieve dreams by transcending/ recreating the past

  • Gatsby with Daisy

• People will spend their energy trying to get it while their dream just moves farther and farther away

  • Jordan is described as the opposite of this

“But there was Jordan beside me who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age.” (145)

• Gatsby was so close to achieving it but never did

  • Never realized his dream although he achieved the rags to riches American Dream

  • Gatsby’s poverty (new money) prevented him from ever fitting in

The Great Gastby Chapters 4-6

Favorite parts

• Gatsby at tea

Superficiality vs Truth

• Materialism

  • Gatsby thinks of materials as showbiz

    • Doesn’t really care about materials

    • Daisy appreciates this

    • Daisy is materialistic

• Gatsby’s two different depictions

  • Jordan sees Gatsby as a romantic soldier

  • Nick sees Gatsby involved in organized crime

    • Wolfsheim

“The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception, he was faithful to the end.”(105)

• Comparison between Jesus and Gatsby

  • Showing Gatsby’s superficial identity

• Gatsby concocted his identity from his dreams-- very idealistic-- but is willing to go through any obstacles to obtain it

“‘Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all. . . .’ Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.” (74)

• Gatsby ability to succeed is limitless

• In America especially New York it is possible to become successful without having any connections-- unlike the rest of the world

Daisy’s and Gatsby’s love

• Gatsby tries turning back time

  • He almost breaks the clock on Nick’s mantelpiece

    • Symbolic of how he's trying to reverse time unsuccessfully

• He is could up on Daisy because of his insecurity

  • He has to come around the house before entering again

  • He wants to return to who he was

  • He is also very nostalgic

  • Maybe he wants Daisy to make him feel more alive since he has already accomplished so much

“He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.” (118)

• Shows how Gatsby love for daisy is not all about her

  • It's him being nostalgic and trying to connect with his past

  • Moreover, his concept of daisy is relayed into his dream and persona-- particularly his lust for wealth

• Both of them drop their fronts when they are together

  • Gatsby stops being his straight-laced oxford educated himself and becomes more nervous

• Look at the progression of weather throughout the day

  • Symbolic of how the meeting goes

“[H]e gave her a string of pearls . . . I was a bridesmaid. . . . She...pulled out the . . . pearls . . . “Take ’em down-stairs and give ’em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ’em all Daisy’s change’ her mine. Say: ‘Daisy’s change’ her mind!’” (82)

• Returning the pearls is symbolic

  • Shows how she only married tom for his wealth and status

• He wants Daisy to admit she never loved Tom and marry him-- the only way to complete his dream

  • Shows his endless greed

Pace Changes

• Faster setting changes

• First 3 chapters → nick experiencing

• In the 4-6 chapters, we get less of Nick’s opinion

Symbolism

• The green light on Daisy's porch

  • Envy

  • American Dream

  • Gatsby's love for daisy

  • The wealth he hoped to amass to get Daisy

  • Gatsby is also more about the game, he is jealous of daisy and he wants to get her (not necessarily keep her)

  • The green light is perpetual→ he always wants more

Class

• Shows Gatsby hamartia: thinks money can buy all when it really cannot and hard work can achieve all

  • Despite having as much wealth-- there is still this divide between east and west egg

  • Shows the dislike for the excess by Daisy and others

• The House Tour

  • The idea of a modern feudal system

    • Gatsby is constantly compared to that along with his ostentatious possessions

“A brewer had built it early in the ‘period’ craze, a decade before, and there was a story that he’d agreed to pay five years’ taxes on all the neighboring cottages if the owners would have their roofs thatched with straw.” (94, 95)

• The American dream, in the end, results in a bad imitation of the European feudal system