Picture of Dorian Gray

[bottlecap]

I'm doing this book for school, and I'm required to draw connections between this book and the world, and other books. While I am enjoying the book, I'm actually terrible with this kind of stuff. I'm hoping some of you could share your opinions on how the ideologies, sayings, etc. of the characters could relate to the ideas of another book, or society.

From Basil's painting, I get the idea of "Be careful of what you create". It's funny because the first thing I thought of was Kung Fu Panda, and how the master created the enemy tiger.

:iagree: with this thread :)

[kev67]

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a bit like one of those deal with the devil stories in which the protagonist sells his soul for fame, fortune and a dissolute life, but comes to regret it. I believe that's the story of Faustus written by Goethe, and I think Marlowe wrote a version of it too. Maybe Macbeth is a bit like that also. He follows the promptings of witches. He gets want he wanted but finds it brings him no happiness and eventually has to pay a terrible price.

[Des Essientes]

The Picture of Dorian Gray was inspired by Joris Karl Huysmanns' novel Au Rebours (Against the Grain or Against Nature). The small green volume that Dorian's friend and mentor gives him in the course of the novella was confirmed by Wilde to be a copy of Au Rebours in court testimony during his trial for indecency. Au Rebours began the Symbolist or Decadence movement in French prose and Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is its Anglophonic adaptation.