<The picture of Dorian Gray : Sins and human nature>

11v2 121004 Kwon Namhyung

           A well-known story, the picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde, is a novel that handles issue of good and evil. The novel is semi-autobiography of author himself, and it contains profound philosophical agony of evilness. In the novel, picture gets wicked whenever Dorian done evil actions. Some critics states that the picture is visual image of sin. Sins visualize in the picture and Dorian’s face becomes disgusting. Oscar Wilde did divide good and evil and described evil and sin as negative aspect that all human have.

           Compared to the novel “Demian”, Oscar Wilde expresses his feelings to the concept of good and evil as two individual concepts. In Demian, Herman Hesse, claims that there is no precise criterion of good and evil. He says that human should never be restricted by good and evil since the concept is very vague. Oscar Wilde mainly has very different perspective and he reflects it in his novel. Dorian meets tragic death in the end. However, even Oscar did not mention good always win. He divided the character into two groups; good and bad. There are some neutral characters, but readers can consider them as good side since they did not show any sins in the novel. Characters in the bad group, for instance, Dorian, meets tragic end like any other novel, however, characters in the good group did not end up living happily ever after. They all end up dying due to their weakness compared to bad characters. Oscar’s perspective towards good and evil is not simple as it is shown in the novel.

           Oscar Wilde introduced another concept to explain about the concept of good and evil. The concept is beauty. In the novel Henry mentions that beauty exceeds evil. He made a point that beauty is even better than goodness. To Lord Henry good and evil is not the matter considering reality. To him, the real conflict is individual and society that is surrounding him. Here, Oscar makes a point of moral and ethics. Moral and ethics is not about good and evil when the concept was initially raised. It was a concept to protect the surrounding society to remain silent from one individual to ruin it. Under this concept, good and evil does not matter anymore. Only beauty and ugly is the matter.

           People call Dorian’s attractive face a beauty of the beast. People look at the beauty firstly even when they are looking at a beast. As the novel turns out to be a semi-biography of author himself, Oscar Wilde thinks that beauty could exceed evil and sins could be forgiven by beauty. However, he did admit that evilness and sins makes beauty into a beast by describing how portrait changed. Aforementioned, the picture is visualization of sins and Oscar did admit that beauty does not last long in front of evilness.

The picture of Dorian Gray

11v2 Namhyung Kwon

           When I first bumped into this novel, I was 14, starting to get inspired and astonished by moral and legal acts, human nature and the devil living in one’s mind. Schools and parents kept telling what’s moral and some acts that we should not do. I, reluctantly, pretend to admit their words, but I always wanted to know the reason or criterion of deciding what’s moral and what’s immoral. <The Picture of Dorian Gray> somewhat strongly affected my inner mind at that time, even though I did not fully understand the whole philosophy of author, Oscar Wilde.

           The novel starts with descriptions of the studio of Basil Hallward, a famous painter. He and his friend, Lord Henry Wotton, were lying back on the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags smoking and having a chat about a drawing that Basil drew. Lord Henry thinks that it was his friend’s masterpiece and he keeps convincing his friend to send it to Grosvenor. Basil refuses the proposal, telling the story of Dorian Gray. He freaked out when his friend asked him to introduce Mr. Dorian Gray. He thought that his friend’s twisted and cynical characteristic would corrupt Mr. Dorian Gray’s pure simple and beautiful nature.

           “Simple and beautiful nature!” As I read down the novel I thought, ‘How can a person have simple and beautiful nature?’ or ‘What is simple and beautiful nature?’ I’ve never met a person having simple and beautiful nature at the same time. If a person has simple nature, he or she somehow disturbs others. If a person has beautiful or moral characteristic, it is never simple but always complex and complicated. Maybe the term “beautiful” does not mean being moral. Moral may be helpful to others but some critics do not think moral things as beautiful stuffs. In some novels and books, pure is both beautiful and simple. They claim that even pure evil is simple and beautiful. However, now I know that pure is not necessary beautiful and pure is not the standard of deciding its value.

           I’ve made a conclusion myself, as “having simple and beautiful nature is being perfect at every aspect that human can have and having highest value.” Having highest value at every feature can be considered as beautiful, since, perfectness is the ideal worth of human nature, and having highest value brings clear ends of controversy topic of being simple. My conclusion defines “Simple and Beautiful Nature” as perfect ideal characteristic of human being. It is not something about pure or clean, it is thing about being perfect by its existence.