Review – The Picture of Dorian Gray
English III
Write the correct name or word next to each statement below, using every word in
the word bank once only.
1. She commits suicide.
2. He disposes of Basil's body.
3. Sibyl's theater role
4. He painted the portrait of Dorian Gray.
5. Lord Henry's wife
6. He wants to kill Dorian.
7. Dorian's ____________was killed in a duel.
8. He sees Dorian at the opium house.
9. Author
10. She thinks living in the country is boring.
11. Person who asks Lord Henry how to become young again
12. Last name of Sibyl and James
13. He murders Basil.
14. He advances Sibyl's family 50 pounds.
15. He shoots the man hiding in the thicket.
16. Young peasant girl Dorian chooses to leave while she is still pure
17. He had a negative influence on Dorian
18. Dorian's housekeeper
Word Bank
BASIL HALLWARD, LORD HENRY, DORIAN GRAY, FATHER, VICTORIA,
SYBIL, JULIET, ISAACS, DUCHESS, JAMES, VANE, LEAF, ALAN CAMPBELL,
LADY NARBOROUGH, ADRIAN SINGLETON, HETTY, WILDE, SIR GEOFFREY
Themes in Dorian Gray (and connections to other stories we will be reading this year!) #1 Duality, Doppelganger, Double Life, Reality vs. Appearances Definition of Doppelganger: evil twin, double Key Quote: • Dorian and the painting are doubles o “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.” o “The portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul.” • Dorian’s outer appearance does not match his inner soul: •
o “Even those who had heard the most evil things against him…could not believe anything to his dishonor when they saw him. He had the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world.” o “But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvelous untroubled youth – I can’t believe anything against you.” Dorian: “Each of us has a Heaven and Hell in him, Basil.” o Human vs. Animal: “The mad passions of [Dorian] stirred within him…He glanced wildly around…” (scene when Dorian murders Basil, and then proceeds in the next chapter to attend a fancy dinner party) Implication/Wilde’s Point: #2 Faustian Bargain Dorian as Faust, Lord Henry as devil/tempter Key Quote: • “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!” • Dorian: “It is the face of my soul.” Basil: “What a thing I have worshipped! It has the eyes of a devil!” • In the opium den: “He is the worst one that comes here. They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face.” Implication/Wilde’s Point: #3 The Danger of Others’ Influence Key Quote: • Dorian’s beauty powerfully influences Basil: “I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray.” • Lord Henry negatively dominates Dorian, enjoying the “terribly enthralling…thrill of influence” o Dorian “never took his gaze off [of Henry], but was like one under a spell…”; he says, “you filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life.” And, the more Dorian knows, “the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.” •
•
o Lord Henry’s philosophy: “a new Hedonism” – “to be experience itself”, to live in the moment of pleasure only, a life of “sensation”, it is “better to be beautiful than to be good” Lord Henry’s gift to Dorian – the yellow book: “After a few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him…the sins of the world were passing dumb show before him.” o “Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book” Dorian seeks to dominate Sibyl: “I love her, and I must make her love me.”; James warns Sibyl, “He wants to enslave you,” and Sibyl replies, “I shudder at the thought of being free.” o Sibyl kills herself when Dorian no longer loves her Implication/Wilde’s Point: #4 Gothic – supernatural/portrait changing, violence Characteristics of the Gothic: A new genre of fictional prose was introduced in
the early 18th century. It was known as ”Gothic Novel” in England.
• Uncanny environments such as castles, dungeons, prisons, cemeteries
• The supernatural, darkness
• Doppelgangers or monsters
• Magic objects, secret rooms & passageways; gloomy or stormy settings
• Femme fatals (damsels in distress), violence
• Demons, the devil, witches and witchcraft
• Science used for a “bad” purpose
Key Quotes:  Use of the supernatural ~ chapter 7 ~ “Finally he came back, went over to the picture, and examined it. In the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-­‐colored silk blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was certainly strange.”  Violence ~ chapter 14 ~ “Campbell took a chair by the table, and Dorian sat opposite to him. The two men’s eyes met. In Dorian’s there was infinite pity. He knew that what he was going to do was dreadful.” Implication/Wilde’s Point: #5 Nature of Good vs. Evil Key Quotes:  Dorian allows his goodness to be spoiled ~ chapter 9 ~ Basil: “Something has changed you completely….You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole world. Now, I don’t know what has come over you. You talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you.”  Evil linked with obsession for beauty (also Gothic – influence of yellow book) ~ chapter 11 ~ “Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.”  Evil is sinful and eats away at a person’s inner life, changing the person forever. Chapter 13 ~ “It was from within, apparently that the foulness and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away.”  We are innately good, but evil influences can poison and destroy. We have to work at being good. It is a choice. Chapter 19 ~ “The soul is a terrible reality. 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.” Implication/Wilde’s Point: #6 Guilt & Conscience, Power of the Mind & Imagination Key Quotes:  Dorian resolves to be good and to love Sibyl. He sees the picture as a symbol of his conscience and he wants to resist temptation, and not see Henry anymore. Chapter 7: “The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience.”  Dorian’s imagination makes him brood over the murder of Basil. Chapter 14: “There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them…”  Dorian is troubled with guilt –he sees Basil in his memory and Adrian. Chapter 16: “He wanted to escape from himself.”  Dorian feels like he is hunted because of his guilt ~ chapter 18: “The consciousness of being hunted, snared, tracked down, had begun to dominate him….how terrible it was to think that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible form….” Implication/Wilde’s Point: #7 Obsession (with youth, beauty & appearances) Key Quotes:  Chapter 2: “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!”  Chapter 7: “But the picture?...It had taught him to love his own beauty.”  Lack of balance ~ Chapter 11: “He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.”  The result of obsession; not using one’s gifts for good ~ Chapter 19: “It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for.” Implication/Wilde’s Point: #8 Significance of a Scandal Key Quote: • Basil to Dorian: “I think it right you should know that the most dreadful things are being said against you in London.” • “Every gentlemen is interested in his good name.” • In the opium den: “You here, Adrian?” muttered Dorian. “Where else should I be? None of the chaps will speak to me now.” Implication/Wilde’s Point: Wilde’s Own Life (Personal Scandal):