Kayla Reid
“It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be
free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings,
he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it,” (Wilde,
220) describes how Dorian wants to be free from his life and he can only do
that by killing the picture, the portrait of Dorian that Basil had painted using
the knife that was Basil’s murder weapon. However, at the end of the book, it
is revealed that Dorian had killed himself and not the portrait of him. Why
would Dorian do such a thing? Is it because he saw himself as the monster
rather then the painting and that was the only thing that he wanted to survive.
In the quote, it says that Dorian wants to kill the past. Perhaps his desire to
kill the past was what led to him committing suicide. He may feel pain and
remorse for murdering Basil. Ironically, he uses the same murder weapon which
he said that he had cleaned it numerous times could be symbolic of someone
wanting to cleanse themselves and hide all of the wrong doing or it could be
the fact that he wanted to kill himself in similar manner as he did to his
friend as a way of fixing the wrong he had committed. The fact that he chose to
kill himself rather than the painting is interesting because in the quote, he
talks about destroying “the picture” but instead he kills himself alludes to
the fact that he saw himself as being this object like a painting and that the painting
was what Dorian saw has is real self manifested into the painting. Is it a
simple case that Dorian has become crazy with grief and guilt that he chose to
honor Basil’s painting by leaving it alone or is it simply that he accidently
hurt himself as if he were Basil to see and understand how he felt. It is
obvious that he wanted peace and he didn’t think that destroying the picture
would give him happiness.
Why do you think that Dorian Gray killed himself rather than
the portrait when he said, “He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with
it?”
Are their any other factors contributing to Dorian’s
unhappiness other than him killing Basil?
What is the significance of using the same murder weapon on him
as he used on his friend, while leaving the painting unharmed?
I believe that Dorian's conscious never really left him. He buried it under all of his wrong doings so that when it caught up with him, he found himself feeling remorse for what all he did.
ReplyDeleteThe painting never really changed, it was him changing, so subconsciously the painting mirrored his soul. The whole thing is very religious almost in how he regrets his reactions and seeks a way out or a 'redemption".
Not only was Basil's murder a factor, his mother's death, his grandfather's tyranny, Lord Henry's cold theories, Sibyl's suicide and how he elevated it to an art as well as all his cold hearted judgements on the people he bashed throughout this time. The vanity in being absorbed in one's self is Dorian's downfall.
I believe that Dorian did see himself as a manifestation of what the picture had become. It was a mirror of his actions and his state of mind, and he knew that he had to end himself in order for it to stop. He had become twisted, grotesque, and mentally corrupted, just as the portrait reflected. In an essence, I believe they were one in the same.
ReplyDeleteBasil said that the portrait was in some way a part of him that he kept hidden. The symbolism of using the same knife to stab the portrait could represent killing the last part of Basil that inhabited the painting. Dorian wanted to kill the painting because it was a witness to all of his evil, just as Basil was a witness to what Dorian had become. By destroying Basil's good and pure view of Dorian, or the painting, Dorian absorbed the evil that he had collected over the years.
ReplyDelete