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The Picture of Dorian Gray is a book that has many different dimensions and is continuously being interpreted and reinterpreted since it\'s first publishing date in 1890. The story\'s main character is a young man named Dorian Gray, he is the inspiration of Basil Hallward\'s art. Basil paints a picture of Dorian, which he considers a masterpiece. Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil\'s and then also to Dorian, is there at the time of the last sitting that Dorian does for the painting. Dorian is fascinated by Lord Henry and his unconventional (perhaps immoral?) ideas. Lord Henry discusses the wonders of youthfulness and the dismay of aging. Dorian is greatly affected by Lord Henry\'s words. He then after sees the picture in completion, he is extremely upset the thought of the picture retaining youth and splendor versus the aging of himself in reality that he says, \"...If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young and the picture 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!\". At this point Dorian\'s looks stay the same as the day he proclaims the phrase above. Although his physical features are not changing, he is changing. Under the influence of Lord Henry, Dorian starts exploring life in new ways. While this developmet begins, Basil Hallward is afraid of the fact that Lord Henry becomes more and more important for Dorian with every single day. He thinks, that Lord Henrys influence over Dorian will end in a desaster. For him the way how Lord Henry lives his life is nothing, that should inspire a young man. And as the plot continues we can see this fear was entitled. At the beginning of this new step in Dorian\'s life he meets a young actress named Sybil Vane, with whom he \"fall\'s in love with\". He also wants to merry her. One evening he wants, that Lord Henry and Basil come with him to the theater where Sybil performs. But the evening ends in a catastrophe, because Sybil plays very badly and Dorian has only loved her because she has been a fantastic actress. As it soon appears to him, he was not actually in love with her, and so he then breaks off their hasty engagement and in turn she commits suicide. This is the point in which we discover that there is a change in the picture of Dorain.. In one chapter of the book Basil comes to see after him after Sybils death but the suicide does not affect Dorian at all. Also Dorian starts to realize, that something happens with him. He also tells Basil that he wants that their friendship will never be over. At this time we can find a few good feelings and thouts in Dorians personality. Dorian hides the picture in a always locked room of his house, as he beginns to see the first changes on the canvas. At this time Lord Henry sends Dorian a book that soon becomes his "bible". The book narrates the story of a french lord that lives hid life in decadence and disdain for the people around him. Then as time goes on the painting changes to represent Dorian\'s soul, the grotesque thing that has become of it. After years and years of living with reckless abandon does Dorian Gray truly consider what his life has become. On the evening before Dorians 38th Birthday Basil comes to him because he wants to talk to him before he travelles to Paris with his pictures. Dorian showes him what the picture as become. While Basil is looking at the picture, Dorian takes a knife and kills him. On the next morning he forces an old firend to help him destroying the corpse. He then decides that he want\'s a \"new life\" and wants to talk with Lord Henry about it during a party, but Lord Henry laughs at him. At home Dorian starts to slash at his picture with a knife in a brief moment of passion. This turns the painting back to the original form, when Dorian was much younger on the day Basil finished it and Dorian made his wish for youth. And now Dorian Gray physically aged and turned into what his painting had been which signifies the end of his painful existence.
THE TWO \"ARCHETYPAL\" SITES OF DORIAN GRAY'S CHARACTER
The Picture of Dorian Gray revolves around Dorian\'s dual nature. On the one hand, he is the young hero whose adventures the novel records; on the other, he is a painted image of \"extraordinary personal beauty.\" When Lord Henry tells him that his exceptional looks will not last, the young man prays that he be allowed to remain as he is in Basil\'s portrait of him. Dorian wants to enjoy his youth for ever. His \"mad wish\" is a key to the archetypal factors which condition the novel, for the quality of \"eternal youth\" is a primary attribute of Dionysos. That Dorian is invested with the attributes of Dionysos is, however, corroborated in the novel. The morning after he cold-bloodedly turns his back on Sibyl Vane, he checks to see whether Basil\'s portrait has really altered. It has -- and he immediately understands what this signifies for him:
\"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.\"
The young man who realizes this has known only the passions of an adolescent\'s dreams. In other words, he believes that, under normal circumstances, such pleasures would stain him, not only morally, but physically. And so he prays that he may enjoy every pleasure which life can offer him, and yet remain unmarked by his experience. Such passions as those he wants to enjoy are associated with Dionysos. This is confirmed toward the end of the novel, when Lord Henry, following their discussion of Basil\'s murder, says to Dorian:
\"You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you.\"
The novel begins with Dorian praying that he be granted the \"eternal youth\" proper only to a god. To seek to appropriate a god\'s attributes is an other very interesting signal for us. Not coincidentally, central to the novel is another myth whose subject has psychological background: It is introduced in an analogy toward the end of the novel, while Dorian is playing the piano. Lord Henry remarks:
\"What a blessing it is that there is one art left to us that is not imitative ! Don\'t stop. I want music tonight. It seems to me that you are the young Apollo, and that I am Marsyas listening to you.\"
Not only Lord Henry, but Dorian too can be likened to Marsyas. For his portrait gradually assumes the aspect of a \"hideous old satyr\". When he tries to destroy it, he (unwillingly ?) kills himself, and the portrait reverts to its original Apollonian perfection.
By virtue of his \"mad prayer,\" Dorian thus appropriates the attributes of both Dionysos and Apollo. He is a symbolic personification of both Dionysian intoxication and Apollonian form; of Dionysian involvement and Apollonian unapproachability. He is able to enjoy the Dionysian pleasures to which he wants to abandon himself, but at an Apollonian distance.
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